Getting the site to support Google Earth and Google Maps presents some challenges. After much travail the battle is won.
I wanted everyone to be able to track our progress using Google Maps and Google Earth. This turned out much more difficult than anticipated as very few have done this for WordPress and nobody has driven both with the same data format. I decided to use the KML for Google Earth as the source for overlay data for the Google Maps embedded on the site.
I wrote some JavaScript to parse the KML and created different maps for each area of travel so as to keep down the number of marker overlays. More markers make Google Maps slooooow and it is slow enough as it is! Google Earth, on the other hand, is fast and has terrain feature data to make navigation fun. Do play with the KML files – I’ll be putting up a purdy link shortly.