I took this was a little cool 3.9 mile hike a week ago which is close to Phoenix Lake in Ross, California (Marin). Most of the hike was shaded and only walked about a mile on a fire road before really getting into the Hidden Meadow area. This is a pretty simple hike and takes you around a cool little meadow area, the climb inst to bad either about a 600 foot elevation change.

One thing about this hike is it gave me great views of Mount Tamalpais. If your looking for an easy hike I would recommend this, but be aware the first mile on the fire road can be littered with mountain bikers but you shouldn’t find any on the trail once you get going.

Below are some is a screen cap of the hike, and of course the links below will lead you to the Google Maps and Google Earth viewable options.

These Links below will show my hike path along with photos taken during my hike.

• Hidden Meadow Hike in Google Maps with Photos
• Hidden Meadow Hike In Google Earth
• Free Google Earth Application

Google Maps is a great tool for anyone looking for locations, driving directions and more. Today Gogole has released the ability for you to create your own map, where you can annotate, outline, add photos or videos to your map. Once you have your map created you can share it with your friends.

I tested this out today and created a map of one of my favorite places for a good IPA beer (Marin Brewing Company). You can check out the screen cap I took here or select this link which will then show you my map in your browser.

To create your own map you need a Google Account which is free, check out the how to here.

This weekend I went on a great hike with some friend of mine and decided to put all my gps gadget stuff to use. With my gps, camera, camel pack and hiking shoes I was off to a great hike in Marin, California. Its a small 3 mile hike with various terrain and not to much difficulty. I snapped a few photos, most of them are just of the hills in Deer Park but the cool thing about all this is I now have gps data of the exact locations where I took my photos and as you can see below I placed them in google maps. Clicking on a red push pin pulls up a thumb of the photo and clicking on that image brings up the full images in another window.

I also put together a full sized map of the hike with the photos here.

I plan on doing this on most hikes and hopefully next time ill write a bit more descriptions about the photos and locations.