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Foliage Peepers versus Leafers, which are you?

Have GPS will travel and tech suggestions

by Jeff "Foliage" Folger

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Credit: Jeff Folger

Put your coordinates to go to the map and hopefully where I'm located..

Credit: Jeff Folger

This shows the coordinates and a "hybrid" with the trees and the road names to help you find the location.

Credit: Jeff Folger

Now you can see the covered bridge roof...

Credit: Jeff Folger

The Fuller Bridge as seen from ground level..

Howdy foliage peepers

I bet you didn't know leaf peeping with me could be educational! Read on?

I wonder if I should say leafers. I just saw in a blog entry out on the web where the gentleman was remarking on a piece about my tips for photographing the fall colors. In it he said they are not "peepers" but Leafers? How do you feel about that? I mean, do you even care, as long as you find color?

Here are some Tech suggestions:

If anyone gets tired of going out and logging into the forum and would like it all sent to you??? Read on...

If you have Office 2007 or a different RSS feed reader and you would like to get all the forum comments fed automatically into your "RSS" reader.

(RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, but who cares, right? I'm not teaching it, so just assume it works)

You should know Yankee just put a feed on the foliage forum at the top of the page and if you click on it, it will add it to your system. If you have Vista and Office 2007 it will (should) link to it automatically. That way if someone makes a comment in the forum it will show up in your reader. If you are using another reader just point it to http://www.yankeemagazine.com/forum/list.php?22 and it should take all new comments on this forum and send it to you automatically.

Get Maine foliage reports sent to you:

I just got my second email report from the Maine tourism folks and if you would like to get them emailed to you then point your browser to maine.gov foliage report and in the top menu you will see where you can register and they will send you weekly reports on the best color that the rangers see on a daily basis?

As of the 17th they are saying that color across the state is green with low color and low leaf drop. But the temps are getting lower and that should get things going quickly! Excited yet???

Traveling with a GPS:

I received a GPS for Christmas and I find I use it all over the place. Now this isn't an article on which one to buy, it is a neat way to follow along with me as I post my blogs. If you are confused as to what Lat/Long is then Google it and find out.

Either way, I'm going to put the Latitude and Longitude for interesting things that I find in my travels. This way if you want to follow along and you can't be here this year or you want to find the same covered bridge or patch of foliage that I just blogged about then you will be able to type in the coordinates to the following website and if I recorded them correctly (I hope) then you should be able to follow along.

I found a website called itouchmap.com and they will let you type in the Lat/Long in the lower right corner of the webpage and then the map in the center of the page will center in on that point. If you have used Google Earth or Google maps then you will be able to manipulate the map with no problems. If you type in the coordinates for the Fuller covered bridge in Montgomery Center (+44.54.11N and -72.38.24) and this will put your map right near it. Now you zoom in and you can see me standing there waving!!!

(There are three screen shots to help you out to the right. The last one will show that I moved the blue pointer so that you can actually see the covered bridge.)

Ok, I'm kidding about seeing me since these are satellite imagery taken at some point in the past. But you can get an idea of what and where I was when I took the picture. [One note] The + and the - are required to put the point in the right part of the world. Or you will think I'm in Asia -- or even Timbuktu. I hope you find this educational and perhaps even fun and maybe your kids will enjoy learning about using a coordinate system and latitude and longitude.

For real techy sorts of people you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Foliage_Reports you can join twitter and follow along with my reports as I'm driving along in New England and spotting fall color.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this and any other subjects in either the comments section or over in the foliage forum.

Jeff "Foliage" Folger

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