My TourGuide

 

I am a history buff and as I travel I like to stop and read the historical markers along the roadside. I find that I can only read signs on the road I am traveling and miss many that are just off the road I am traveling. I have even questioned the marker for being contrary to real facts. Some try to rewrite history. I found the website http://www.hmdb.org/CountiesGPXList.asp and even contributed several markers that were not in the database. I could download the data of states I was driving through and see what markers were near. I made it a Redlight file with set distance of 1500 feet. This would only give a partial listing of what is on the marker.
I then started to study TourGuide and how it works. I did a small file for my trip to ST. Louis and found out it was just what I wanted. I had entered the text of each marker and converted it to wav and it read them well. While in ST. Louis I heard about the Dredd Scott case about 7 times as I passed the Courthouse.
My next trip was to Vegas and Phoenix and back by another way so I started my planning.
My first question was "what is historical?". My answer is "No Statue of Liberty, No war Memorials, No homes on the National Historic Home Registry, etc. It has to be history that happened there except if I feel a need for it.
I downloaded the states I was going to travel from HMDB and put it on Google Earth and then put in my route and started to deleate markers that were to far from my road. My limit was 25 miles for it would only be a hour or so delay.
I took the text and converted to WAV and then increased the volumn by 6db for there is the problem of road and car noise.
I took my trip and felt good for everything worked as expected.
I now will work on extending the file to LA and then back to San Tan Valley to Iowa for our next trip in June.
The question now is how to share my files with other people who could enjoy hearing history at the places that it happened.