Desultory Thoughts

If you’re familiar with Google Maps then most likely you know about the awesome “street view” view. It was originally available in San Francisco and New York but since then Google has been busy driving the streets of many metropolitan cities and taking pictures with their fancy truck.

I’ve ascertained that they were here on September 11, 2007. If you were in downtown Salt Lake City on that day (or within a day or two of 9/11 because who knows how long it might take to drive up and down every street in Salt Lake) then check out the maps and see if you can find yourself!

I looked at the places I work first to see if I could find myself walking to lunch and that’s where I found my clue as to when the google truck was in town. I work at the Energy Solutions Arena and the marque says “September” and the flags are at half-staff. That narrows it down to 9/11 and a quick google search confirmed that the Governor had ordered that all flags be at half-staff on 9/11/2007.

People have noted all sorts of interesting pictures that were captured in other cities when people in public places didn’t possibly realize that they were in fact in a public place. I wonder what we’ll find happening in Salt Lake City. If you find something interesting, please be sure to let us know! Here is a YouTube video that shows just how detailed these street views can get.

UPDATE:

In my excitement to post this story I just assumed it was downtown metropolitan Salt Lake City. BOY was I wrong. Tooele even made the cut!! They drove by our house and I didn’t even know it. And my kids weren’t out playing that day, darn it.

Besides Tooele they pretty much got everything as far south as Santaquin, as far north as North Ogden and from the Dugway exit on I-80 all the way Kamas in the east.

 UPDATE: As I’m looking around I thought it would be cool to link to some of the things I’m finding:

I mentioned Clint before in a previous blog entry and now he’s writing at BonnevilleMariner.com. Since then he’s started writing for Tooele’s only newspaper, the Tooele Transcript Bulletin. You can read his debut online where he talks about a fun Saturday afternoon adventure he had with three of his children in the west desert mountains of Skull Valley.

My good friend, Clint, has begun recording his adventures in a new blog entitled “BonnevilleMariner“. The current story is one that I had the pleasure of being involved in; a noisy ride to Nevada in my oil-leaking Jeep with Clint and John. We nearly ran out of gas at least once and we were completely lost at one point. I can honestly say that that was the only time I’ve been lost and were it not for the insistence of the majority that we were finally walking up the right road, I might have been lost forever. I’ll comment more on his blog for history’s sake.

I look forward to reading more stories as they’re posted and I’m sure you’ll enjoy a lore or two if you take a moment to visit and browse. It will be more reminiscent for me seeing as how I’m Clint’s adventure buddy and have been involved in many of the adventures he’ll share. The one place he didn’t follow me was down an old, dark, long-forgotten mining tunnel. And wisely so. (Yet again, because he was there I am not still lost or now dead.) Thanks, Clint!

John posted an old video on YouTube tonight that I made a while back. It was great to see it again, I had forgotten all about it. It’s a little bit corny in that you can pretty much tell that I stretched 1 minute of video footage into 4 minutes, but it’s still an interesting look into the past. The last four minutes is a reading of the entire poem that was written by my good friend Matt when he was on his mission in Rome, Italy in 1995.

A friend at work passed an email along to me with these pictures. He said it happened at the top of Hurricane Hill on the way to Kanab, Utah.

Click on the pics to see larger versions.