What a wonderous feeling! Finding the right map at the right time is a pleasure many people will never know. Their loss!

About 7 years ago I was getting ready to hike the length of Oregon on the Pacific Crest Trail. I had larger scale maps, a good GPS, and still there wasn't enough detail to be truly useful. Only the biggest bodies of water and only the larger changes in elevation were clear, and many little creeks could have been trails and vice versa.

And then I discovered in an obscure magazine that the entire trail was available CDs from the Forest Service maps. I bought those in a hot flash, printed out my path and marked appropriate spots. I got about 7 miles on each page, and packed them with my re-supply materials. What a sense of security it was.

The next year I was headed from the Oregon-California border south. I had done the same things for that trip. I was resting on my first day and a fellow came from the opposite direction and sat down with me. Turns out he was the fellow who had put those maps on CDs. Something he just decided to do one day, and had access to the Forest Service stuff. Unfortunately, he was a rather dour type, didn't like hiking, didn't know why he was on the trail and had no idea where he was going to find any mosquito repellent. (There was a lot of that at the border, where people had shed that of which they had too much.)

Enough reminiscences. A good map at the right time and place is a joy forever!