I’ve had this road atlas for a while, and I occasionally pull it out for various reasons. The second most common reason is that I am reading a book that references specific places and I want to get an idea of the geography of the area. That’s why I pulled it out this time. I am reading Cannery Village (review to come shortly) and it referenced a number of places on the coast of British Columbia. Sadly, despite my prodigious geographic knowledge and living in close proximity to British Columbia, I know very little of the geography of it’s coastline. Of course, it’s mostly roadless, so my only visits there have been to Tofino and in a cruise ship alone the coast. A cruise trip where I put my head down and read books rather than follow the map on the television screens. So in reading the descriptions of the coast in Cannery Village I was obliged to look at a map. Alas, being that this is a road atlas and the places described are in roadless areas, and additionally are mostly long gone places, I was able to find only one or two of the locations. I’ve had better luck other times. Part of the reason is that the book focuses on the Skeena and Nass river systems, both of which are very far north on the coast, and the B.C. map in this atlas stops somewhat further south than Prince Rupert.
The primary reason I peruse this atlas though is to just wander. Sometimes I’m thinking of visiting places. Sometimes I just want to see how the puzzle pieces all fit together. Do the people in place A go to place B? They might, it’s only 5 miles away! But more likely, I’m just staring in rapture following the geography from one place to another. Maps just look beautiful to me. I imagine this is what the art buffs do when they go see the Mona Lisa. Look how exquisitely the smile is upturned right there! That’s what I do with maps. It doesn’t really matter the kind, road or topographical or political or whatever. I love most all of them. I have a box filled with all the maps I get my hands on (outside the couple of atlases I own).
These days, it’s rare that I would plan any travel using a map in paper form. Google Maps is so much better for getting maps for where I will be going. It’s directions are pretty dang good. It’s A.A.A.’s TripTik’s on steroids. But a road atlas like this is nice to bring along for those meandering aimless road trips. I also like to take a highlighter and mark the roads and places I’ve visited. In fact, that specific reason is why I purchased this road atlas. I had another one, but it went missing at one point, along with all the highlights for places I’d visited. So I had to re-mark this one from memory. I realized only last night that I messed up in a couple of places. On my 1997 Canada road trip, I went to Drumheller, and took a spur of Canada 1 near the Lake of the Woods, both of which I missed when I re-did it a couple of years ago. Ah well.
Title: Rand McNally 2002 Road Atlas: United States, Canada, Mexico
Publisher: Rand McNally
Format: Paperback
Publication date: September 2001
Length: 138 p.
ISBN-10: 0-528-84431-8
Subject: Roads — United States — Maps
Subject: Roads — Canada — Maps
Subject: Roads — Mexico — Maps
