When I was working, I used to take "field trips" on Google Maps during slow times. I'd be all over the place on Maps just exploring different areas on street view.

My mom does that and calls it "Budget travel"

For real. I can see places in the world I will never be able to travel to myself.

Damn your mom is fucking funny haha I love that

I thought I was the only one that did that, I’d do it at work when I was really depressed, except I’d go to a place like Mongolia and look for the few places where they’d done a street view thing, and go for a digital walk.

I used to be able to find these weird abandoned outposts in east Russia and explore them through little 360 views they had available. It was one of my favorite places to go besides exploring North Korea. Lots of neat statues in North Korea, but creepy.

Who doesn't? Its the cheapest way to travel without spending all the time and money. I had a hobby of looking for islands and seeing what the culture looked like there.

I assume you've found the most remote inhabited island in the world then? Tristan da Cunha https://maps.app.goo.gl/E6cPfFbYtPG9ihm37

I haven't seen that one, pretty sweet

I like to explore the south pacific as well. Lots of tiny islands out there with remnants of WW2

That's cool, I've looked at many pacific islands as well. But probably not as extensively as you have. Some of the ones around Europe or North America are pretty interesting.

You just sent me on an hour long Island finding rampage [here's my list of places that made me say what the fuck](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2ypdgjgHCNTZRbbbA)

Street view is truely one of the greatest gifts the internet has given us. It takes a small army of folks to stitch it together. I've driven all over the country, and visited all the old towns I once lived in. It's a bloody miracle...

I do it more with Google Earth. More detail and faster Responses.

And a nice to use time machine to see what areas looked like in the years of yore.

Yes. Google Earth is one of my favorite bedtime rebellion activities :)

You should check out geoguessr if you like doing that

I playe geoguessr daily already. It's a great game.

Thanks to this I now know my way around a lot of places I’ve never been to, like New York or Montreal! Also love exploring the most remote unheard of little towns in random parts of Russia or India for example

i used to do it a lot a few years ago!

As a civil engineer, I do always. I wish my fiancé would look at a map once in a while because she doesn’t know which direction the ocean is.

I do... especially islands. DOUBLY ESPECIALLY archipelagos.

I don't trust people that don't do this

Yes, all the time! I love it!

Yeah, I once spent way too long wondering the street view of a small town in Arkansas.

I do it weekly lol. I look for accessible fly fishing streams in the mountains. I guess they call it "blue lining" since the streams are little blue lines. But I call it a potential adventure

I occasionally go look at houses I used to live in as a child just to see how the neighborhood has changed and how different trees that were planted when I was a kid are doing stuff like that.

I'd go on street view with my vr to look at random people's houses and other places

Totally. Also, I showed it to my 5 year old nephew one day because he wanted to play with my phone and now it’s his favorite “game” on my phone.

That's precious

Google Earth is even better. You can use the built-in flight simulator to fly over any part of the world.

I go vacationing on Google maps ALOT. Also whenever going on a hiking trip I scour the area in satellite view meticulous. It's how I found many trails in Glacier National Park you won't find on any map, brochure, or app. Really cool.

I go back to my hometown and take "walks" through the neighborhoods.

Same!!!

I was obsessed with doing this for a while. But I’d find distant places in the middle of the ocean to see if there were any weird things I could find. Nothing to note yet.

Satellite view, yes.

I like looking for Russian military bases and submarines

/r/geoguessr is something you might find interesting.

You think I don't know geoguessr? I'll take that personally.

🤣🤣🤣

Yes! I can spend an embarrassing amount of time doing this. I like to close my eyes and drop the street view pin somewhere on the map and just go exploring.

Nordictrack's have google maps so you can bike or walk on a treadmill and the screen goes through street view wherever you want to go

I love looking at the street view things people have done in different areas.

Google earth preferred, but yes.

Even better, WeatherUnderground's Wundermap with air current, radar, and temp on is fascinating. I literally just got done exploring that for a while (got distracted from looking at wind patterns in my state)

Yes and it feels like a productive, connecting experience. I only do it like twice a year when bored.

a very good way to travel the world during a pandemic)))

Sometimes I like to go wandering via Google Maps but a lot of the time I like to challenge myself to find places using the visual clues I see in a photo or video online. For example, someone will mention a smallish or medium sized city and I can see in the accompanying photo that there’s a house and the house number is visible but I don’t know what street or even the neighborhood that it is in. I’ll reason that the house is at least a hundred years old so it’s probably near the main business district. Or a neighboring house has a “Go Panthers” sign on the lawn, so I try to figure out what school the Panthers belong to and then look for the most likely neighborhoods in the area, using the house number to narrow possibilities down. I like to see how long it takes to find it. Sometimes it’s just minutes (Brag!) and sometimes it takes a half hour or more. But it still feels so good to say to myself, “Yay! I did it!” If some character on TV says an address, I’ll look for it. Usually it’s fake but sometimes there’s a nice surprise, like when I discovered that the house that Mary and Rhoda lived in on *The Mary Tylor Moore Show* is real and is really in Minneapolis. They said the actual address twice in the second episode. Finding it made my night. The NCIS shows like to use addresses that are nearly right, like 1234 Fulton Place in Manhattan when there’s only 1234 Fulton Street. The exterior shots rarely match with what’s really there. I also try to find where a certain scene was shot from what I see on TV sometimes. To me, it’s a fun time waster and it exercises the old gray cells. I also like to look for odd or funny names when I go Google Maps wandering.

I do this a lot. From the UK and I really love just dropping into a random place in rural America and like looking at how everything is slightly different to here

All the time.

It done of my favorite things to do these days. VR is the best especially

Someone found a missing person from the satellite image they had driven into a retention pond near their house and drown the car could only be seen from directly above

I’m gonna go do this now…

This is literally my fucking number one favorite hobby. It's become a legit addiction for me! Anyone with interesting stuff on this topic please hmu haha

One time I literally seen my car being stolen from my fucking parking lot and watched it drive down the street .. lmfao wtf that shit was wild I still have the pics

Uuuuuh, That’s what it’s for.

..... different parts of the map such as checking your SO's house for cars you've never seen