Google Earth is awesome...If you download the latest version it will overlay roads, show you hotels, food, etc.Some of the satellite images are out of date and some of the not so populated areas do not have great detail. The only state that was really well photographed wasIndiana for some reason?Also, if you don't want todownload yourgoogle earth simply go to http://www.maps.google.com and you'll get the same picturesbut rather than an application it streams through your browser. A long time ago I was able to get high resolution photos (2 years old) from terraserver http://terraserver.microsoft.com/. After a lot of copying and pasting into photoshop I had a really HUGE map of our farms. Good luck!!