Ok, so I found one at http://nationalmap.usgs.gov/ - I clicked on “go to viewer”, then I was able to go in and remove the state boundaries and the interstates.
I clicked on where I thought this town is (using the Appalachians as a guide), then zoomed in pretty close, put the interstates back in and realized that I was too far north - I’d end up over the border in Kentucky, but not too far over the border.
Using the Microsoft link provided, I came out pretty close. The map said I was 11 km SW of the nearest city. I live 5 miles from this city, to the SW. I would head for the East coast of the US, find Philly and head up the Schuylkill River.
40 or 50K miles up, eh? We’re presuming we can do straight up-down motion and no real orbital-dynamics are involved.
That’s a good bit farther than geosync so I’d first try and see if thru the clouds I can recognize what hemisphere I’m over and what rough lat/long I am above. Then adjust my orbit so I’m over the Americas.
At that point I do my first motion, down to such altitude as the hemisphere fills my full field of vision; adjust orbit so I’m roughly over the Central America/Caribbean region. Drop to where Caribbean fills entire forward field of vision. Adjust orbit until I am right above Puerto Rico.
Drop myself to about 20K feet. Get myself above San Juan, seek out the street pattern of the San Juan Medical Center, get above it. Drop to 1K feet altitude, acquire the 50th St. Baseball field, land there. Walk home, should be there in 15 minutes doing an easy stroll.
The Saint Lawrence River is not the sort of delicate phenomenon that readily escapes notice, and once that’s located, I’d just have to fly along it until I saw Montreal island. After that, it would be a cinch. I’ve been able to trace the landscape from about Anticosti Island to here before, while arriving by jet.
Piece of cake.
46.20 N, 122.18 W for you earthlings.
Yep.
I used the USGS from North America, and selected a spot to zoom to, one after an other, and only had to move north once, to choose rivers, coming out of the Chesapeake Bay. After that, it was a piece of cake all the way to the Occoquan, and the Accotink, then straight down to my back yard.
Cool.
Very easy!
West coast of North America, facing Vancouver Island. The Fraser River is obvious, with Vancouver on the north side. Follow Kingsway (the diagonal major street) east into Burnaby and along a little farther, and I’m a couple of blocks north.
Our library has an aerial photo mosaic covering the whole city, and I’ve found my place on that before, so I could drop in right at the front door.
Sure. Zoom in on Northern CA; it’s the only good-sized town that’s not on a river or I-5, while also being north of Sacramento and in the valley.
Where I live now, easily. If you zoom in enough, you can actually see the windows of my apartment in one of the Terraserver images. Where I grew up (central NJ), it’d be tougher for me.
Complete WAG, but I’d guess the only really hard place to do this in the US would be the heard of the midwest - Kansas or Nebraska or somesuch, where there aren’t a lot of large physical landmarks to go by.
Any Dopers living there want to disagree?
Using the map **Lsura ** linked to, I got within fifty miles of where I live and I’ve only been here a month. Once I figured out where I was, it’d be a cinch to follow I-5 into Salem and then west into Dallas with no problem.
Not bad, if I say so myself.
Yes I could, and from this map.
Along the Pacific coast there are two parallel strings of lights that run roughly north-south. About halfway between Portland and San Francisco the more inland string makes a sharp right angle turn, with 2 or 3 lights right next to each other. I’m very close to the leftmost one. 
I noticed two large islands on the map with no lights, which made me wonder if anyone lived there. I looked up the names on my globe and found this site with information:
I found out there’s a good reason no one lives there: it’s freakin’ cold and wet and windy all year round, due to the “Roaring Forties”, which is essentially a near unbroken belt of wind all the way around the planet at around 40° - 50° S.
Anyways, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the landforms are very distinctive. On the other hand, at night it’s a huge glob of light, so I might end up off course a bit until I got close enough to pick out individual lights.
I don’t understand this question.
I pretty much know where I am at all times. Finding where I live from, let’s face it, what is essentially a map, is as easy as pointing right at it first time.
Easy, if I have a browser and a big telescope in orbit. There aren’t a whole lot of features to distinguish central Wisconsin from orbit, but I was able to find my town by pan and scan from an questimated start point that turned out to be about 15 miles off.
My place of employment is here, the big building tat the top, just a little to the left of center.
My previous hime is here. Describing it so well that you could pick it out is too big a hassle, but take my word that I can see the correct building.
My current home is here. There are 4 big buildings in the bottom right quadrant with a pool in the center of them. Mine is the left-most of the 4.
Yeah, I could pull that off without much effort…heck, it’s how I do my job about half the time!
[QUOTE=Lsura
I just went to http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ to see if that site has the map that you can click on without the state outlines.[/QUOTE]
That site is awesome! I had a blast finding my house, my mom’s house, and my grandparent’s house!
Totally cool!
To find my house, I found our town, located on a large lake, and looked for our house along the highway, which turned out to be really hard! When driving home, I basically count hills, which aren’t obvious at all in a straight-down view. I was trying to find the creek that runs behind the house, but I was underestimating our distance from the town. I finally ended up zooming in on the highway and following it out from town, watching carefully for crossroads, ponds, and other landmarks. It turned out that at high resolution, the best landmark was the trailer court down the road! Once I found our house, I backed out the zoom, and saw that the woods back behind the house are actually pretty big, and easy to indentify in the lower-res images. (The woods hide the path of the creek very well, which is why that wasn’t a good landmark to use!)
I am now confident that if I was trying to find my way home from space, I could find the lake at hundreds of km resolution, then pick up the highway and the woods at tens of km resolution—and from there setting down right next to the barn would be a piece of cake.
I’ll letcha know if that ever comes in handy. 
Darn, I misstook Moffet Airfield for San Jose airport a mile or so up, and landed in Mountain view. Still I can get the train easy enough from there.
Thanks for the link to that site Lsura. My old home in Windsor UK was easier to find, find London, find Windsor to the west on thames just past Heathrow, find the castle, follow down the Long Walk and just a little west of the road crossing the longwalk.
Bippy, I was just about to say the same thing. The zeppelin hangar is visible from space, and from there it’s a quick 20 minute drive to my house. (Not counting rush hour traffic, of course)
No problem. Mt. San Gorgonio is a major topographical feature for Southern California, and since I can hit it with a long 3 wood shot…
IFR - just follow the I-10 until it takes its turn towards the south, then aim for the mountain.
