# Did you spend time just looking at maps as a kid? Anyone else still do it as an adult? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 21, 2018, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320 "2018-07-21T11:51:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2018, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/101 "2018-07-24T13:49:38Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > I do find myself MAKING little sketch maps pretty often. That reminds me, the first time I went into a dungeon with a DnD group I was one of the people who spontaneously took out a notebook and pen. In Spain school notebooks have squares, 5mm to one side, so they were great for those maps. We once had a campaign DM’d by my brother Jay which he’d warned would be huge; we realized how big he meant when we saw how much mapping paper he’d already used for his own maps and the amount he’d set aside for us. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2018, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/102 "2018-07-24T14:29:35Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > That reminds me, the first time I went into a dungeon with a DnD group I was one of the people who spontaneously took out a notebook and pen. You played D&D? I knew there was a reason why I’ve always liked you! 😃 Another map nerd checking in. I, too, used to pore over our family atlases, just imagining places. I’ve also always been a big fan of fantasy cartography. I have several of the fantasy atlases that Karen Wynn Fonstad had done, including [Middle-Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlas_of_Middle-earth) and [Pern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlas_of_Pern). If an RPG book contains a world map (particularly if it’s a big poster map), I’m in heaven. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2018, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/103 "2018-07-24T15:14:14Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Awesome to peruse the responses! > > Quick show of hands: how many of you, like me, get a little thrill when you open a new book and discover that there are maps before the story starts? 😃 Me me me! I recently read a book that takes place in 19th century Iceland and I can’t tell you how many times I referred to it. That piqued my interest in Iceland, about which I knew next to nothing, and that led to me looking up all kinds of things about \* it\*. I know this makes me sound old but I miss globes (I know, they still exist, but I rarely see them any more). When I was growing up we had one of those topographical ones and it provided me with hours of fascination. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2018, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/104 "2018-07-24T18:38:23Z")
I’m going to give myself a medal. My first present to The New Nephew was an inflatable globe 🙂 It’s a[beach-ball-globe](http://juegaconmigo.es/featured-list/bola-del-mundo-hinchable-50-cm.html). The store had two sizes; since the boy would arrive to us just a few days short of turning 2yo I picked up the smaller one. Most of my current reading is in the computer. For books which have maps, I usually keep it open in one window while reading in another so I can flip to it easily. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2018, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/105 "2018-07-24T19:10:23Z")
I’ve been reading road maps and atlases since I was around 4. I was always fascinated with the way they designated certain roads as more important than others and how they used certain marks to signify the size of cities. If Google Maps and Street Search had been around when I was a kid, I probably would’ve never left my room. ---
**Author:** ![Goodnight-Loving](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9fc29f/32.png) [@Goodnight-Loving](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Goodnight-Loving)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2018, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/106 "2018-07-24T19:22:46Z")
My childhood bedroom was “wallpapered” with National Geographic “centerfolds”. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2018, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/107 "2018-07-24T20:38:26Z")
Nava, that’s neat. When I was eight years old, my mother and I went on a car-camping trip through Nova Scotia, Canada. There’s a road on Cape Breton Island called the Cabot Trail — about 100 miles, in a circuit. She had read that it’s more fun to drive or counter-clockwise, closer to the edge of the cliffs. I fell asleep right when the correct turn had to be made — when I awoke, she had committed to driving it clockwise (it was still fun). That’s how much she depended on me for the map-reading and navigation! ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2018, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/108 "2018-07-24T20:40:43Z")
> [@P-man](#): > > Does anyone else have a map of the world shower curtain? We’re on our second one; the first Ms. P had when we met. I had one throughout college. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2018, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/109 "2018-07-24T20:50:54Z")
> [@Hopeful\_Crow](#): > > I just mentioned to the Big Crow the other day that I wondered what had happened to our family’s old Hammond World Atlas. I loved that thing as a kid, traveling from town to town, up and down rivers and coasts, and hopping from island to island. That’s the one I grew up with! (“Medallion” 1970 edition). When I took a college cartography course ten years ago, I was so nostalgic for that atlas that I figured out the fonts it used, purchased them for my laptop, and used them for my class project: Franklin Gothic for the little towns, Hermes (not quite right, but the closest I could find) for the large towns, and Gloucester Condensed Bold for the cities. By the way, this last font has made a comeback in recent years — I’ve seen it used in various contexts. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/110 "2018-07-25T02:37:41Z")
Yes, when I was a kid I was fascinated with maps; they seemed almost magical to me. I had a world map tacked on my bedroom wall, along with a Rand McNally [Map of Outer Space](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1404/2135/products/SpaceA.jpg) (really just a wildly out-of-scale illustration of the solar system). One year I asked for a globe for Christmas. I’m relieved to learn that I’m not the only person who whiles away evenings on Google Maps. I will sometimes spend hours wandering the streets of random towns. What I especially like is when you’re clicking along some road and the images suddenly get much older, because the Google car hasn’t been there in a while. Newer buildings vanish, long-gone businesses come back to life, cars get older, and billboards advertise forgotten products. ---
**Author:** ![Dandan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@Dandan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dandan)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/111 "2018-07-25T13:00:47Z")
Almost everything said here applies to me, as well. Currently, I’m using [Historical Topographic Maps - Preserving the Past | U.S. Geological Survey](https://nationalmap.gov/historical/) (the Download Client) to move maps of my neighborhood, Western Maryland, to Adobe Bridge. I can then select the oldest version, typically 1949 - 1951, and the latest version, which may have been updated just a few years ago, and open both in the same image in Photoshop, as layers. One will be stacked above the other, and you can use layer opacity to fade it in and out. Great fun to see what has disappeared, what is new, how roads have been moved. This has led to searching the ground for vanished buildings, their foundations, anyhow, as well as hiking miles of abandoned railroad right-of-way. Unless I missed it, there seems to be a total lack of map partisanship. Well, have a peek at this! See you in the pit! [xkcd: Map Projections](https://xkcd.com/977/) Dan ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/112 "2018-07-25T13:29:28Z")
> [@Dandan](#): > > Unless I missed it, there seems to be a total lack of map partisanship. Well, have a peek at this! See you in the pit! [xkcd: Map Projections](https://xkcd.com/977/) > > Dan Ha! That was on my office door for over a year. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/113 "2018-07-25T23:14:10Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > One year I asked for a globe for Christmas. I was lucky as a child to have a 12" floor-stand relief model in my bedroom. It was fun to pet the mountains. Now the only globe I have is an arty thing made with pieces of ebony, MoP and semi-precious stones, so it is only evocative, not so much accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2018, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/114 "2018-07-26T02:06:39Z")
I do love my some maps. There’s a site lost in the sludge pile of my bookmarks list (and probably listed already upthread) that allows you to select an area and view a wide variety of current and vintage maps as toggle-able layers. Now I need to go find it and kill my productivity for the rest of the evening. I not only have piles of reasonably current paper maps, I have from time to time gone on buying sprees for vintage gas station maps. Not only was a lot of the artwork really excellent (I’m particularly fond of [50’s Chevron maps](https://www.google.com/search?q=1950s+chevron+maps&safe=off&client=safari&hl=en&prmd=simvn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjkxPe81rvcAhVkilQKHb3qC6YQ_AUIEigC&biw=1024&bih=666)), but I find I really enjoy looking at things pre-interstate. How my parents and grandparents might have traveled, from small town to small town along no particular straight route. How I like to travel these days when I have the time. Endless, relatively cheap entertainment! ETA: true story time. As a kid, my parents, short on free time as small business owners, offer took us on road trips to semi random locations. I loved following our journeys in real time with the ever present Rand McNally road atlas. For quite some time, I believed that ‘Vicinity’ was a very important and very large city. You know, the little inset maps showing, “Chicago and Vicinity. Cincinnati and Vicinity. St. Louis and Vicinity.” I held that belief for quite a while, right up until I asked to go there on our next trip… ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2018, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/115 "2018-07-26T02:51:37Z")
I’d meant to share with the rest of you one of my favorite blogs, [Strange Maps](https://bigthink.com/articles?blog=strange-maps). He’s been doing it for years, featuring a mix of antique maps, modern maps, and map-like objects. Much like maps in general, I find myself going down the rabbit hole in the blog, and reading article after article. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chicken\_Fingers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Chicken\_Fingers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicken_Fingers)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2018, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/116 "2018-07-26T03:08:08Z")
I’ve always loved maps, too. As a kid I’d look at them for hours, and relatives have always given me all their National Geographic maps. I never really feel I know a place until I’ve studied its map. I got to work on some maps as an editor, years ago. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2018, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/117 "2018-07-26T13:47:40Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > I’d meant to share with the rest of you one of my favorite blogs, [Strange Maps](https://bigthink.com/articles?blog=strange-maps). He’s been doing it for years, featuring a mix of antique maps, modern maps, and map-like objects. Much like maps in general, I find myself going down the rabbit hole in the blog, and reading article after article. 😃 Love it. I use several of his map mini-essays in assignments for my students. ---
**Author:** ![carlb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carlb/32/5930_2.png) [@carlb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carlb)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/118 "2018-07-27T11:18:21Z")
There are people who _ **don’t** _ love maps?!? The world is even bleaker than I thought. We didn’t travel much, or very far when I was a kid. My first job after college required a lot of road trips, so the standard Rand-McNally Road Atlas was my very first purchase immediately after buying my first car. Got me from New Jersey to Tioga, ND and back in the pre-cell phone days. For some reason, I have never been comfortable writing in books, even my own. My wife is an inveterate highlighter and margin-note-writer, but I have never done that. I _did_, however, mark up this atlas with the frequencies and call signs of radio stations I liked, so I would be able to find them again the next time I passed through that area. I was particularly proud of myself for thinking to do that. We’ve got a couple of those scratch-off maps where you can track the various countries you’ve visited. Sometimes I surprise myself with how long I can look at mine. There’s nothing on that map I don’t already know - I “created” it. It still fascinates me. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/119 "2018-07-27T14:13:33Z")
Maps and politics mix in an NY Times detailed map of the 2016 election. Not to taint this interesting thread with a political discussion, but the interactive nature of the map is pretty cool. SDMB thread here: [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=859452](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=859452) ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320/120 "2018-07-27T17:24:41Z")
I love maps, which is good because I taught social studies for so long. I especially love GLOBES, which are increasingly hard to find. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-spend-time-just-looking-at-maps-as-a-kid-anyone-else-still-do-it-as-an-adult/818320.md?page=7)