atlases and maps

Well, I have never been too impressed with this atlas. I fell in love with the beautiful Benchmark & rarely look back. The dirt roads in Delorme look like hiking trails, the book splits California into 2 sections, paper is weak quality. It will do in a pinch, but I would rather have my 'REAL map book'.

The Southern and Central California Atlas and Gazetteer by DeLorme always travels with me on my frequent road and rock-hounding trips in SoCal. These maps are a cross between road maps and topo maps and may or may not be what you need. If you want a standard road atlas, you will probably find the contour lines and dirt road details distracting. For these folks I'd recommend Thomas Bro's California map book or a trip to AAA. For folks who know what 7 1/2 minute quadrangle they'll be exploring, I suggest you visit the USGS map sales room at the Menlo Park office [it's self-serve...I always spend at least 3 or 4 hours pouring over the topos] and find the specific quadrangle you need. I generally use this atlas on trips when I'm going to visit areas I've never been to before. I need more details than the standard road atlas offers, but I usually don't buy the USGS topos for an area unless I intend to go back and spend some time at that location. This is the atlas that guides me when I first visit a new rock-hounding site. My friends and I refer to the atlas as the 'orange map book' since the old editions had an orange cover. I'm on my third copy [but I keep my older trashed copies for all the annotations I've made in them]. As any experienced map user knows, no one set of maps will work for all purposes. I recommend you add this atlas to your map reference library.

Road depiction is very vague. Difficult to read. Somewhat useable with AAA maps. For the best maps see the series by Benchmark Maps. I have used their maps in New Mexico, California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona. Unfortunately, they do not have many states. I use the Delorme "Utah" with my AAA maps.