GeoGarage has figured out a way to overlay the complete set of nautical charts for United States, New Zealand Brazil and the United Kingdom over Google Maps which allow you to pan and zoom with ease. They also have a feature where you can drop waypoints and create custom routes which are saved to your free account.

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The great thing about camping and paddling is that there are so many items that you can either make or “upgrade” yourself.

The website, Instructables is a fantastic resource for the tinkerer. The site is great as they give step by step instructions for almost anything under the sun. A while back I covered their awesome instructions on how to your own computer out of a stuffed beaver. We are talking about very practical stuff here!

Below is a list of interesting items related to camping, canoeing or kayaking:

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Google announced a massive expansion to the number of cities in Canada that are now available on Google Street View.

I decided to take short tour to see if any paddling shops are now available online.

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It took forever but Valley Kayaks has just rolled out their new website for the world to see and it’s a huge improvement to the placeholder that has been sitting there since the beginning of November. For people who haven’t been following along, the super short story is that their site went down abruptly back in September. Due to some unforeseen problems with switching site hosts, they were unable to load up their old site and had to do a complete redesign. You can read a slightly longer version of what happened here.

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Anybody who reads blogs knows that generally speaking they are all over the place with a wide range of topics. Hey, that’s what keeps them interesting.

As you know Freya Hoffmeister completed her monster trip two days ago and for those who have been hiding out underground, she just completed a circumnavigation of Australia in 332 days with a total distance of over 13,000 kilometres!

It’s a pretty huge deal for the paddling community and currently didn’t go unnoticed in the blogosphere. I can’t remember any single paddling event of recent years that has received this type of unified coverage. And it should, it’s a pretty big deal!

Get up to speed on expedition breakdown:

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The Coastguard Boating Education from New Zealand has recently unveiled a new Online Kayak Safety Module to go along with the many other safety courses they offer.

The new safety online mini-course is a flashed based program designed to help new paddlers to make good decisions before getting on the water. The topics covered include weather, choosing appropriate gear and communications equipment.

On the whole, I’m quite pleased with the way that it is put together. It’s focused on beginner kayakers so it’s pretty rudimentary but that is ok. It’s a very good start with the focus on what is really important for new paddlers, prevention and risk management.

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I just wanted to draw attention the Kayak Quixotica blog written by Derrick Mayoleth. Anybody who is into reading kayak blogs is probably aware of it already so it doesn’t need any introduction.

If you haven’t been there lately, drop by for a visit. His last three posts have been very interesting (not to say the rest isn’t!) as they are about a new technique for teaching low braces, instructor professionalism and making sure that the paddling industry supplies new paddlers with appropriate gear rather the the most expensive gear.

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We all know that Flickr is a great location to share your photos online but one of their best features is Flickr Groups. There you can join and place selected photos in a pool of similar photo topics. It's great for new photographers to get your photos out to the public but it is very cool for surfers cruising around filling time. In the mood to look at wet cats? There is a group for that. What about photos of Don Knotts? It isn't big but yes, there is a group specifically for him. You get the point...

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As a teenager, I spent many summers running around Algonquin Park. I worked for four summers at a kids camp that bordered Ontario's oldest Provincial Park and guided tons of kids on its endless rivers and lakes. Some of best memories ever were during those four summers.

I loved that park so much that I used to have a canoe routes map pinned to the wall that I would stare at during the dark days of winter.

A whole pile of new memories came flooding back recently when I discovered a brand new map developed by Jeffrey A. McMurtrie, a York University student. Boy, has he done a fantastic job!

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The Big Picture is such a fantastic site. Published by the Boston Globe, it's a giant photo collection of the best photos of the day. Sometimes it's a bunch of random photos but generally, it's a collection of photos of a current topic in the news.

Today was no exception as they covered the Red River flooding along the Minnesota-North Dakota border. The Red River is completely jammed up with ice and with the melting snow, the water has nowhere else to go but over the banks and into residents houses.

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Can't get enough of me? I know I can't!

I recently started making use of Twitter. For those who are already lost, wikipedia defines Twitter as "a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length."

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