I was looking up information about hikes in Connecticut, and I
happened upon a site that will generate topographical maps for the
entire United States! The link is below:

http://www.topozone.com

You can choose from four different scales (1:25,000, 1:50,000,
1:100,000, 1:200,000), and three different sizes (small, medium,
large). And the maps are in color! I was able to generate a map of
the area around my property, bordering Devil's Hopyard State Park. I
can use this to practice orienteering. I didn't read much about it,
but I'm assuming that north on this map is true north, rather than
magnetic north. It seems like it would have to be, since the
magnetic declination can vary from year to year.

To see the map I generated, click the link below:

http://topozone.com/map.asp?lat=41.478&lon=-72.351&s=25&size=l

I just thought this might be nice for some of you serious hikers.
And for those of you that are curious to see areas you recently
hiked, from a topographical perspective.

Oh, did I mention, the site is FREE? That's the best part.

This past weekend I found two letterboxes, plus the 'Boxcar'
hitchhiker, in Scotland, CT. I'll likely hide the Boxcar on my next
jaunt. I guess that means I'm at P0F5 (placed none, found five)!
Just out of curiosity, if one hides a hitchhiker, does one count that
as placed? I wouldn't think so, but I was just curious.

My wife and I are hoping to place our first letterbox up in Nova
Scotia in a few weeks. We're going up there on vacation, and would
love to be the first listed letterbox in Nova Scotia. We're also
going to Prince Edward Island for a day, but we don't want to be too
ambitious.

Chris, in CT

Yeah, Chris, topozone is great. There's another cool site that JDW
pointed me to (but I'm away and don't have my bookmarks handy) that
combines satelite photos with topo maps. John, do you remember that
site?

I agree with Tom: you can "find" a hitchhiker, but you only "place"
the ones you create. We've seen a one of our own hitchhikers (boxcar)
while we were out checking on letterboxes, but we left it where it
was for someone else to find. Then, recently, we discovered another
of our own (Airstream) while searching for cockadoodle-moo
letterboxes, and we were so thrilled and surprised that we took it.
We haven't added it in to our "found" score yet, but the discovery
was so fun that we thought of counting it as both "placed"
and "found."

Congratulations on your growing count! Hope to get up to Nova Scotia
next summer, so am looking forward to your clues.

JayD from CT in NH