google maps rocks

Driving across the country has dramatically changed since the invention of google maps for the google people are brilliant. Before, eating off the highway involved cracker barrel, dairy queen, or the ubiquitous nut mixes. Finding a starbucks involved doing extensive painstaking on-line searches before leaving or calling friends and family (you know who you are) who would frantically try to answer the question: quick! we're going through St. Louis! Where's the nearest starbucks! Those days are sadly gone. Find your starting point on google maps, zoom out a bit, then click on local search. type starbucks into the left side, leave the right side stating "in the map area below" and you can find all the starbucks in that map area. Just drag the map to the next stretch of freeway, repeat, lather, rinse, and you've got a list of all the starbucks on your route. Now repeat using "thai" as the search factor, and you're listing every thai restaurant on your route. or mexican, or vietnamese, or chinese. Plus you can get a good sense of the ethnic makeup of the US based on the region you're searching and the food you're searching for. We had fab food the whole drive from PA to Den and then from Den to Vancouver. Proudly cracker barrel free, baby.