If you haven’t tried out Google Earth yet, you should. It’s free. It’s a program for Windows and Mac that lets you fly around a 3D globe and look at satellite images. It even has 3D terrain, so you can get a cool view of places like the Grand Canyon.
Before our wedding/honeymoon, I was constantly checking Google Earth to see if they would update the satellite photos of the Cancun area so I could get a better idea of where we would be going (OK, maybe I’m a bit OCD). I was disappointed because at the time, they only had detailed photos of the Cancun airport. Yesterday, I found out that Google rolled out a massive update to their imagery, so now they have nice, detailed pics of Cancun and the Riviera Maya. This morning, I put together a “sightseeing tour” of our wedding/honeymoon. Once you have Google Earth installed, right-click this link, choose “save as,” save it to your desktop, then open it and a series of placemarks will be loaded into Google Earth. Each placemark has a description of what happened at each location. Have fun!
P.S. For a really spectacular view of Chicago, turn on the “3D Buildings” layer in Google Earth by looking in the left-hand list under the “layers” section.