Friday, June 05, 2009

Finding roads to map for OpenStreetMap

Even if there is still a lot of mapping to do here in Finland, we already have most of the major roads done. I at least are having a problem finding roads to map when I'm not driving just for mapping anymore.
For example, our family summer cottage is a 240km away from my home, and all the roads that it makes sense to drive trough have already been mapped. And it doesen't help that the fastest way is the E18, starting 100m from home and going almost straight to the summer cottage, with only about 7km of some smaller roads to drive so you tend to prefer that fastest route instead of smaller roads. Not that I personally don't like driving on them, it's the others in the car (read: girl friend :) that like to get there fast.
So I've been trying to find some way to get myself on smaller roads and I think I've found a nice way that also requires a GPS. And, you guessed it, it's geocaching! I try to look for caches in obscure places so that I need to drive on smaller roads. And the gf, not eager, but at least she likes geocaching and tags along.