MORE MAP UPDATING
After getting helpful guidance from Dr. J on finding the
ID-NV-UT 3-state point, I decided it would be a good idea to get the BLM maps for the Idaho approach to the point, so I visited
PublicLands.org and put the two relevant maps in my shopping cart.
Then I thought, "maybe I should get the map for the nearby district of the Sawtooth N.F., in case I want to camp there going/coming, so I added that to my cart.
Then I thought, "I really should 'bracket' the 3-state point with the BLM maps for the NE corner of Nevada and the NW corner of Utah", so I added those to my cart.
Then I thought, "I've never explored the Jarbridge area of northern Nevada, and it could be on a loop home from the 3-state point", so I added that district of the Humboldt-Toiyabe N.F. to my cart, as well as the adjacent BLM map.
Then I noticed the Jackson Mts. BLM map on the Nevada page of the site, and I know that my Jackson Mt. map is at least 20 years old...and I've never crossed the range and a map might be helpful, so I added that map to my cart.
Funny how a little map order can snowball...
Now, I
could get most of this same/equivalent info as a download, add-on, to the
Backcountry Navigator app on my Android phone, and that can be handy -- especially when combined with the phone's GPS for tracking me hiking/traveling across the map (and is certainly less expensive to buy the information).
But the screen on my phone is 4.7" (my tablet is 10") and a hardcopy map, when open, is like having a 36" screen (a
foldable giant screen), one that permits panning by simply moving my eyes rather than swiping across the relatively-tiny screen.
On the other hand, In my tablet's storage I have the complete NatGeo TOPO maps for several western states. Really nice and handy to be able to carry such broad and deep geographic reference with me on a road trip -- a lot handier than carrying several boxes of 7.5' quads.
Both approaches to geographic information storage and retrieval -- hardcopies
and digital devices -- have a place in my world.