Lunch-time excursions to Forest Park. That’s how I spent my free time at the North American Cartographic Information Society conference in St. Louis. While it was exciting to see new maps and presentations about cartographic history and even making maps, I had to visit a prominent swath of green on my St. Louis Map.

Enter Forest Park; an urban park established after the Civil War and used as the site for the 1904 World’s Fair. Today you can freely walk along a sculpted archipelago of scenic lakes & historic monuments, freely visit an art museum and fantastically intimate zoo. I wish my city had a Forest Park.

Some photos: http://www.outragegis.com/pixel/071009_14-ForestParkMO
note: these photos were shot with a camera phone, so at best they’re distinctive.

We’re developing our latest map for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and we had a question. As a hiker and user of maps, do you prefer a detailed GEO graticule (you know…the degrees, minutes, seconds…) or do you prefer the military grid, UTM, which is in meters?

We have both on most of our maps, but which would you use most?

Of course the graticule would be most useful with a GPS unit in default configuration. If you choose a GEO graticule, do your prefer units in decimal minutes (e.g., 36° 45.35′) or decimal degrees (e.g., 84.2546°).