I though this was pretty interesting and worth sharing, so hopefully someone finds it useful. I believe I posted before about USGS topo maps, which can be downloaded for free. While these maps are higher resolution, searching, downloading, and navigating the USGS website is a pain. There are quite a few historical maps located in the USGS database from years past. However, its a rather timely task to find a map of a particular area.

So the other day while searching the internet I came across this nifty little online map used to track NOAA ships. At first it didn't seem like much but as I zoomed in further and further more and more detail began to appear. Below is a image showing the progression of detail for the topographic map. There's also imagery view (which is basically like google earth, kind of nice for switching back/forth), nautical charts (not really useful but still kinda cool), along with streets and weather.

http://shiptracker...v/shiptracker.html

Heres the progression of detail on the topo maps.

Here's another screen cap from a more mountainous area.

Any good topo plugins/kmls for Google Earth? I used to use 3DSolar's kml file, but their server seems to have died and the company is now devoted to emo robots.

I'm limping along with ESRI/NGS topo kml right now, but it sucks. Never updates properly, constantly locks up, and is generally a pain in the ass.

I've been using this lately to find benchmarks (survey markers) - within the geo-caching community there's a small number of benchmark hunters. Probably less popular since logging a find doesn't up your cache count at all, but still fun if you're older and a nerd.
http://www.ngs.noa...y/NGSDataExplorer/

This one is also kind of cool its a google earth KMZ file that overlays a USGS topo map. In mountainous areas its pretty rad due to the 3D effect. Problem is its dated and lags "A LOT" when loading - then if you zoom in or out; or if you move to far to in one direction it will want to reload. It also plots survey markers but you can turn that function off.
http://ngs.tsqmadness.com/ge/index.html



and this is TU1334