If you are a user of Delorme software mapping products, such as Street
Atlas USA, you have undoubtedly received the flyer for their new "3D
TopoQuads for Washington" product, described as combining USGS raster data
with Delorme's road and topographic data.

Breathlessly reading their flyer, it seemed like the perfect birding tool,
so I ordered the product.

I received it today and can report that I am definitely......

.....well, perplexed.

It comes on seven CD's arranged by regions of Washington -- well, it's kind
of arranged that way. It seems that if you are in Region 4, and ask for
more detail of Wenatchee, for example, it asks you to insert the Region 7
CD (S.E. Washington!). But I drift off point....

I decided the best way to check this thing out would be to pretend that I'm
preparing for a birding trip in eastern WA, and want to visit two of my
favorite haunts, Indian Camp Road (off Badger Mountain Road on the
Waterville Plateau), and Northrup Canyon, just east of Banks Lake at
Steamboat Rock.

I got out the proper CD, Region 4, and started at Wenatchee, a place where
I lived for a while as a kid. I noticed immediately that as I zoomed in
for more detail of the town, the map switched from the typical Delorme
vector (truly digital) format to a raster format that is clearly a scan of
a hand-drawn (I gather) USGS map -- a really jarring transition. Further,
since I have current knowledge of Wenatchee, I can say that the map is
quite old (a point I will prove later). I moved to Saddle Rock (that's
what we always knew it as even back in the 50's, but in retrograde mode,
just as we are renaming the duck to Long-tailed, Delorme has the terrain
detail as Squaw Saddle, what my grandfather called it in the 20's) I
switched to 3D mode and the program did display a pretty decent 3D image of
that thing I have climbed so often.

Done with fun stuff, I moved on to East Wenatchee, found Badger Mountain
Road and started up the hill to the Waterville Plateau. As I passed
Fancher Field I was puzzled -- there is actually no longer a Fancher Field
-- it's mostly housing, and since it looks like it passed the EPA test in
the area where they used to wash out the hoppers of the spray planes, there
will be more housing. So the map's age shows. On up the mountain, the
elevation lines gave a good sense of the rapid ascent. A 3D view is really
impressive!

But as I leveled out on the plateau, and approached where I know Indian
Camp Road is, I realized that the road is not named -- in fact very few
roads are named in this product. I turned on the road, and can say that
the program gives an excellent representation of the terrain elevations.
But as I zoomed in, the program suddenly asked me to insert the Region 7
CD. Strange, that's for SE WA. But I put it in and suddenly I could zoom
in closer to Indian Camp Road, but in a strange mode that looks like a
1700's map! Interestingly, the green riparian areas along the road are in
all the correct places, but the amount of detail of elevation lines makes
everything cluttered and confusing.

(I went back to Wenatchee in that mode, and saw some really strange detail,
such as the ditch water line along Methow Street, and green "trees" to
represent orchard areas (some in areas I know are now developed). But few
streets were named, so I quickly lost context as I moved around.)

I moved on to Northrup Canyon, and a lot of the detail was there, and the
canyon was named, but not the road. I was a little confused by the road --
it seems like the road up to the parking area and gate is drawn exactly the
same as the trail down into the valley. So I still couldn't determine
exactly what was going on.

I checked out Silverdale, where I live. I am in a development that was
mostly complete eight or nine years ago, and the streets had been put in
many years before that. In the Delorme vector map mode (less detail) the
streets in my development show. But when you zoom in, and the program
switches to USGS raster map mode, none of the streets are there!

The point... The close detail USGS raster maps are apparently ~very, very~
old.

I have found that Northrup Canyon and Indian Camp Road are more easily
found in Street Atlas USA although no elevation lines are shown. And even
the printed Delorme Atlas is easier to use if you just need to find the two
locations and see a little of the terrain.

Bottom line at this point -- I find it puzzling (or buggy) in asking for
seemingly unrelated CDs when zooming in, and I find the more detailed USGS
raster maps to be very old and confusing in structure.

So, with a very limited examination, I am concluding that we need some more
users of this thing to give us their impressions and findings. At $130
it's not a small investment, and I think Washington birders need more
information before making the purchase.

Jerry Blinn
Silverdale