Thursday, May 29, 2008

Washington Park on Google Earth

I recently mentioned that the annual open house at Washington Park is coming up on June 1. I also recently noted that Google Earth has added some hi-rez views of the northern part of Bonaire. There are still some areas of Bonaire that are fuzzy and there are some clouds that get in the way, but the new imagery is still a very welcome improvement.

Here is a link to a Google Earth KML file that shows the track I obtained on my GPS receiver as I bicycled through the park. I took the long route (along the seashore) on my way in to Slagbaai and the short route (the only one open these days) back out to the park entrance.

So download this file, and save it to your hard drive. Then fire up Google Earth and click on "file" and "open", and navigate to the KML file that you just saved. On my computer, if I simply double click on the KML file, it all happens automatically.

Once you have the track through the park superimposed on the Google Earth image, it is pretty easy to take a virtual tour of the park. Zoom in on one your favorite spots, like Wayaka, and it is almost as good as being there.

If you still have a hard time identifying the various points of interest in the Park, have Google Earth running in one window and this map of the park open in another. (scroll down on the page a bit to get to the map)

Let me know how this works for you. I plan to add more Google Earth tours of Bonaire, from my bike rides, if it proves practical.

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