Boise River Armchair Tour

Liz Paul, Idaho Rivers United, posted links to several Mountain Visions Google Earth Tours and Gigapans shown at the Boise River Armchair Tour last night, November 26, 2013.

These include the following:

Wild Upper Boise River (HD) YouTube Video using Google Earth to show photos and dams being considered on the wild and free North and Middle fork sections.

Grimes Creek/CuMo Mine A Google Earth 3D Tour of the Boise River headwaters where exploration for the potential CuMo Mine is ongoing.

4 Boise River Walks These include 4 different EveryTrail photo walks produced with the iPhone App.

High water google earth tour With Lighthawk we shot aerial photos of the Boise River at High Water on June 3, 2011 and produced a Google Earth tour showing photos juxtaposed on the 3D Map.

Barber Pool Conservation Area and Boise Foothills gigapan - Approximately 500 telephoto images create this interactive 3 Gigabyte photo.

Boise River Looking downstream at Barber Pool from Highway 21 Bridge Gigapan Approximately 250 telephoto images are used to create this 1.5 Gigabyte Interactive Image.

Guide to view Comet ISON in December

The Huffington Post has published the following graphic guide for seeing the Comet IOSN in North America starting December 1, 2013, assuming the comet is not destroyed by its close encounter with the sun.

Is "Glamour Camping" appropriate on the Middle Fork of the Salmon Wilderness?

Today, there was article in the Idaho Statesman titled "No roughing it: Go 'glamping' on the River of No Return" written by William Kronholm - The Associated Press.

Here are a few quotes to describe "glamour camping" or "Glamping" from the article.

"Stuffed morel mushrooms and braised free-range chicken with fennel puree and blackberry compote. Served on linen tablecloths with a carefully matched wine. Pineapple upside-down cake for dessert. This is wilderness camping? ...In other words: no roughing it."
"No wedging into a tiny backpacking tent for the night. Each couple has a stand-up six-person tent with cot, mattress and pillow, a lantern on the night table and a rug on the floor." "...Yoga sessions after breakfast...the masseuse awaits you at her streamside massage table...Want a hot shower? Just ask; it will be arranged." "And the food? Four-course gourmet dinners every night, with organic ingredients and a chef’s eye for presentation. Gourmet breakfasts as well. And a hot lunch on the river, unique among rafting companies that usually offer cold cuts."

I wonder how much of the gear necessary for this "Glamour Camping" is carried on the supply boats for each trip and how much of it is either cached at supply points along the river or flown in by aircraft to landing spots. It would also be interesting to know how much money a Middle Fork of the Salmon Wilderness "Glamping" trip costs each customer.

FYI, I am embedding a Gigapan image I produced at Boundary Creek, the put in point for all "private - commercial" river trips and most "public non-commercial" or common adventure river floating trips on the Middle Fork. ((For some reason the Federal agencies such as the Forest Service reverses these terms and designates non-commercial trips as private assuming that the expensive trips supplied by commercial outfitters are for the public.)

Daggar Falls is just upstream from this point and would require a portage for most float trips. Imagine portaging all of the gear necessary for the Glamping trip described in this article! I will add another Gigapan image of Daggar Falls too.

Megaload Google Earth Tour on Highway 12 in Idaho

On September 13 2013 Judge Winmill again rules that U.S. Forest Service can halt Industrial Megagloads ( Wider, higher and longer truck transports than the highway was built for) while studies are done and the Nez Perce Tribe is consulted. (See the Idaho Rivers United web site for details on this current ruling.)

I started creating this Google earth tour in the fall of 2010 before the first megaloads were due to start moving and created the KMZ file in February 2011. The tour showing the narrow Idaho Highway 12 along the Wild & Scenic Lochsa River. You can see the narrow bridges and canyon walls where the huge megaload trucks have to travel.

Download the 6GEMegaloadsTour.kmz file here.

An automated tour that lasts about 9 minutes is available when you double click the "Megaload Tour (Play this first!" icon just under the Google Earth KMZ icon which you should see in your "Temporary Places" in the Google Earth browser. You can pause (II) the controller bar that appears in the bottom left of the Google Earth map window and use the navigation tools to explore the map as you wish. When you hit the Play (>) button the tour will resume from where you paused it.

For example, in Google Earth you can turn on the street views and see panorama photos taken from the highway. You can also turn on the Panoramio photo layer to view photographs people have submitted over time.

Boise River Walk 5 - Idaho, United States

Liz Paul, Boise River Coordinator for Idaho Rivers United led another Greenbelt Walk for Health, Habitat and Heritage during the July 7, 2013 Boise Sesquicentennial Party at Julia Davis Park.  

I used the Everytrail Pro iPhone app to create a GPS track and photographs during the walk.  This was a similar walk to the one Liz led on April 5, when the leaves on the trees were starting to green.  Today was hot and the green trees provided much appreciated shade.  We also saw a lot of people floating the river.  At the end of the tour I shot one 30 second video of a band playing at the Bandshell with the EveryTrail app which reduced the size to 360p.

Boise River Walk 5 at EveryTrail
EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in Idaho

Update 2 / Mobile device Google Earth view of 4 Boise River Walks

 I have been able to view kmz files on my iPhone in Google Earth and decided to try to load the new file combining kml files from 4 Google Maps and 4 kmz files from the EveryTrail app produced for the Idaho River United Boise River Walks for Health, Habitat and Heritage.  In addition I added polygon shapes around the 4 different walk areas and placed a name for each. 1.  Barber Area; 2. Julia Davis Park;  3  Willow Lane; and 4. Garden City.

Below is a Screen shot from Google Earth showing the 4 Boise River Walk areas.

Amazingly it works the same as it does on the desktop Google Earth Browser.

The easiest way to use the file below on your mobile device that has Google Earth (iOS and Android at least) is to send the file via email and open the mail on your mobile device.  Clicking on the file will allow you to open it in Google Earth on your mobile device.

BoiseRiverWalksHealthHabitatHeritage4.kmz

I am interested in how this works because it seems that it could be considerably faster,  less complicated  and more customizable to create a mobile virtual tour this way than to try to create a stand alone app.

One issue I see right away is that the EveryTrail tours do not automatically run from photo point to point as they do in the stand alone EveryTrail map.  However, the tracks and all of the photos are available to look at individually.  It would be easy to create a direct link to each EveryTrail file in order to be able to run the slide shows.

One assumption I would have to make is that people use Google Earth enough to feel comfortable exploring in this 3 D virtual world environment.

I would appreciate any comments about this idea.

Thanks,

Gary

Update / Boise River Walks for Health, Habitat and Heritage

I decided to try to add the Google Map kml files for each of the 4 Boise River Walks organized by Idaho Rivers United in the spring of 2013.

While doing this I also added a polygon line around the area of each walk and added a visible name to identify these areas from a distance in Google Earth. Now the pop up information windows from Google Maps show up in Google Earth.

 This is still a work in progress as images could be added to these windows and more detail could be added to the EveryTrail photos. It would also be possible to add video clips and other information to the tours.

 Here is a link to the new kmz file with new features noted above added.