When I first read that Google Street View cars were spotted Hawaii back in April ’09 (reported on by Hawaii Blog) I was pretty excited. The thought of virtually cruising up and down Front Street or some of the roads near tough to spot beaches was neat, especially being 4,200 miles away.
It wasn’t until seven months later that the service actually went online for the Aloha State, and I can only imagine it’s been getting better ever since.
Fast Forward
Fast forward to last night, when I was looking at the Daily Maui Photo for Saturday, which is an aerial shot of the Iao Valley State Park I took during the Maui Photo Festival that year. The aerial shot led me to drill into the satellite imagery on Google Maps to find out how far we had hiked when I took my Iao Valley Stream photo on our previous trip.
In the process of viewing the satellite imagery on Google Maps, the little Street View guy was there staring at me, so I said what the heck and gave it a shot. And here’s what I found.
Pretty cool, if you ask me. Now, the next time someone asks me on Twitter at @DailyMauiPhoto about any of my Iao Valley photos, I can point them to here as well. People can actually “drive” up to the parking lot of the state park without having to leave their living room (or if their on vacation, their hotel room).
And aside from the cool factor, it looks like they Street View team had much better weather than we did when we were last at the Iao Valley State Park. Here’s my closest shot to the view above from that trip:
The blue skies from the Google car make for a much better image, don’t you think? Not bad for a series of cameras bolted onto the roof of car, if you ask me.
Where Else Has Google Been?
I haven’t made it a point yet to check out other popular – or lesser known – spots on the island to see what Google has covered yet, but I’ll try to make a point to, soon. If you do give it and find something good, please share in the comments as I’d love to check it out.
- Kris
