Hey, What's That?

I stayed up late last night preparing today's earlier post which, in turn, gave me license to stay abed through most of the morning - ah, retirement. So, when I did finally waken, read awhile, and have my breakfast, I went back to the computer to wander about in search of new and wondrous things.

I came across a Google Maps page which, is not affiliated with Google Maps, but is kind of a clearing house for websites that incorporate Google Maps somehow for all sorts of interesting things. I found one especially interesting one - so far. After having used a map in my post yesterday to show the alignment of the Colorado River and the canyon through which it was running with the La Sal Mountains in eastern Utah, I just have to show you this.

Hey, What's That? is an interactive website that allows you to define a viewpoint. A couple of minutes after you submit it, the program spits out a graphic panorama, that includes highlighted mountain peaks that are within view (i.e., named peaks [features?] from the Google Maps database that are not hidden by surrounding terrain). It also provides a list of the peaks and, when you select one, repaints the map with the direction, line of sight, distance, and elevation of the peak. There appears to be much more to explore here, so I'll drop this and let you explore it yourself if you're so inclined. I've included portions of two screen grabs to provide examples.

The first (above) is similar to the map I included in yesterday's post. The second (below) represents the results of the manual steps I went through last night to describe the Henry Mountains from the Orange Cliffs Overlook in the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands.

Now, how's that for a neat trick?