Slow Baja - Travel Talk With Slow Baja Meet The Benchmark Maps Team That Created The New Baja California Road And Recreation Atlas

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

Today's Travel Talk with Slow Baja, we chat with the team behind the new Benchmark Maps Baja California Road and Recreation Atlas. Cartographer Neil Allen, Bridger De Ville, Director of Sales and Marketing, and Baja expert and project consultant David Kier are my guests. "The Baja California Road & Recreation Atlas is truly unique, combining the most accurate trip planning information with spectacularly beautiful landscape Maps. Discover the value of current and reliable road and recreation information. Use these maps to plan your next road trip or weekend adventure while exploring the highways and back roads of the Baja California Peninsula. First-time visitors and lifelong residents alike will appreciate this unique view of Baja California and Baja California Sur." Baja fans are well aware that both of the most coveted Baja maps, the Baja Almanac and the AAA Baja California Map, have long been out-of-print. They have been soaring in cost on eBay, causing much frustration among travelers who want an analog option for planning and navigation. The new Benchmark Maps Baja California Road & Recreation Atlas will quickly supplant those titles to become the go-to map for all serious Baja travelers. Get yours today from Benchmark Maps.

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches and hands down my favorite tequila. Hey, I want to tell you about your new must-have accessory for your next Baja trip. Benchmark Maps has released a beautiful, beautiful Baja California Road and Recreation Atlas. 72-page large format book of detailed maps and recreation guides that makes the perfect planning tool for exploring Baja. Pick yours up at Benchmark Maps.com. Hey, this is Michael Emery in this little Baja podcast. I have the good folks from Benchmark Maps today on a Zoom call,

and we're going to talk about how this beautiful Baja, California Road and Recreation Atlas came to being and what came into being and what they went through to make it and get the backstory. and I've got, well, I'm just going to let everybody introduce themselves. So Neil, take it away. Yeah, I'm Neil Allen, director of grotography for benchmark maps. I'm Bridger Deville, Seals and Marketing Director for Benchmark Maps. And I'm David Keir, a lifelong Baja California enthusiast and author of Baja California Land of Missions. And this is David's third appearance on the Slow Baja podcast, but the first by Zoom.

So normally I like to get up to see David in person and talk to him about things. But I'm really excited. There's been some buzz. And the buzz hit my mailbox day before yesterday and my Baja, California Road and Recreation, Road and Recreation Atlas showed up. And I've just been diving into it. I had to put aside some reading that I was doing for another podcast and just really dive into this. And, you know, I have some of your other atlases, so I'm familiar with the format.

But this really is an amazing production because you've broken it down with recreation. And you've got the regional maps, of course. And then you have recreation maps. And then you have landscape maps. So whose idea was this? And how did all this come about? and, you know, anybody who wants to tackle these things, dive in. We'll jump in there.

Yeah, I was going to say, jump in. Yeah, sure. So several years ago, we started receiving requests from our customers for something for Baja California. And we're constantly researching new states to develop atlaces for new areas. We had some projects underway. But it was mostly in the wake of the Baja. Almanac by Landon Crumpton that went out of print in 2009 after his untimely death. And that title, as everyone knows, became very valuable online and was almost impossible

to get a reprint made. So we looked at getting one, taking a look at it. We weren't too familiar with Baja, but we'd been down there a few times and really enjoyed it. It's an international title for us, so it's a whole different list of tasks that have to be done in terms of data compiling and field work. And eventually we were in 2019, we were attending the ESRI user conference in San Diego, which if anyone from San Diego knows it's a real big event there. for Esri, the kind of GIS software company. And Neil and I were down there and we had a fortuitous dinner meeting arranged with David Keir.

And David really got us fired up and put us over the edge and helped us really commit to creating the Baja California Road and Recreation Atlas. It was more of a from the beginning project for us because we could not acquire data. Neil can speak more to the technical aspects of that, but we knew we would have to, for lack of a better word, just start it from scratch and created ourselves. And so we took the time to do that. It's very exciting. Neel, do you want to talk about a couple of them? Let me jump in here for a second.

So I'm assuming that most of the folks listening to Slow Baja are well aware of the Baja Atlas. Certainly, I picked up a couple of them years ago at Mama Espinos, when they were already sold out in the States. So by just buying a couple at retail down there, you know, I was already, you know, well ahead of the market. And they were a little treasure find. I picked up a couple of them recently on Craigslist, a guy who'd used them and was heading back to Europe and just decided to put them on Craigslist. And I couldn't believe my good fortune to pick up those. And I recently gave them. those away with the pending arrival of your product, your new Road and Recreation Atlas. I decided that I should at least get rid of one Baja Atlas set to the Slow Baja folks. So I did a little promotion and a giveaway and made somebody very happy to get that. But I feel your map, it looks like

starting from a clean slate. It's stunning. I mean, no corners cut. It's a, it's a, it's a beautiful thing to look at and a beautiful and stunning amount of detail. So Neil, take it on, tell us what cartographers do and how you approach this project. A lot of it had to do with the Guinea. Well, thank you very much for the compliment, first of all, about the looks of it. We're happy with it as well. But yeah, I mean, part of it was started originally from looking at the Almanac and just seeing how it worked and functioned. I mean, the almanac also, I think, was complimentary to us and that had very similar aspects to what we also, some of the graphic elements that I think they borrowed from us, perhaps

over the years, and that's a very common cartographic thing. But yeah, when we started it, we looked to that first just to see and how that fit the market, and then we just started building just a little bit from scratch. I mean, we've kind of built it in a data format, you know, without thinking of how it's going to be stamped out into an Atlas. So it's somewhat of a seamless database of sorts. And just looking at all the elements we're going to need, and we heavily leaned on David for that just because of some of the elements

that we were unfamiliar with or didn't particularly know, whether it be the Baha'adubite Trail or all the missions and so forth. So we compiled all that and then really heavily researched a lot of public domain databases. One of our MOs is that we don't ever just use an exclusive data source from any one place, or even if it is public domain. We even looked at buying some proprietary or private company's data early on, and it just was so prohibitively expensive. We decided we could do better ourselves and that we could build it for our own.

ourselves. The only data you need is David Kear. He's been hand-drawing maps down there since 1974. Yeah, and that was it. And so we, you know, we declined to buy the private data and said, okay, well, we'll just send a bunch of field checkers down there like we normally do and start checking stuff out. Well, then we all know what happened. And unfortunately, we weren't able to do that. But fortunately, we had David in the wings and could lean on him a lot more as a consultant. And he was more than eager and willing to do so. So we were very happy to have forged that relationship early on. And it really, it really was key to getting this thing as good as it is. Those are two very apropos words for describing David Kier, eager and willing.

So David, tell us where they screwed up, you know, show them, tell us, tell us the Loh Bah world. How much work you had to put into this to get it up to David Kierspec. They are only now seeing by the ordering frenzy what a thing, what a new direction in life that benchmark maps is taking by entering the Baja map world because we are so passionate about our maps of the land that we love down there. and it was just a super, super thrill to have them contact me to meet and discuss this project. And I've been wanting to be helpful in producing an accurate Baja map since the land in Baja Almanac days when I'd written him letters and was never able to meet or contact him directly only through third parties. So, yeah, when he passed away, it was like, well, what's going to happen now? And Baja Bound and I discussed working out something to produce a guide and a map. And, you know, I produce some maps in the road guide, which will hopefully be published once this COVID nightmare has passed.

And travel is fully opened up, which I think we're pretty close to seeing. And so anyway, it was just a great thrill for Benjamark to contact me. We had a great meeting in San Diego, and I was ready to help in any way I could. And boy, I was just so thrilled that I could help as much as I did. Yeah, well, I saw some of these from afar. You wouldn't let me take too close to look at them when I came to speak with you last. I mean, it really is super exciting. Again, if you've been kicking around Baja for a while, and, you know, you've

been added a few more years than I have. The old AAA maps, which now you have to find on eBay or someplace else, those are one that everybody should have. Obviously, the Atlas that we've spoken about. And I remember having a conversation with Jeff at Baja Bound about, oh, he had a line on the distributor, had cases of those things still sitting around and they were just negotiating what they're going to pay for them. I thought, what does it matter? Get by them. Get them. Get them. all. 100 bucks a piece, we can, you know, do a big fundraiser. It'll be fun. But here it is. Benchmark maps has come to the, come to tackle this project, an international, your first international project, and you've produced it beautifully. I keep looking at the map, and I'm,

I'm really hooked on the recreation side of it right now, and looking for dirt roads and trails that I can drive in my old land cruiser. I keep coming back to this green lines. Oh, look at this. Ooh, look, look, and it's the Baja divide. The Baja divide route is in your map. That's just amazing. Who wants to tackle that? Neil? Who's the corporate genius who says we're putting in the Baja, we're putting in a bike trail? Well, again, that was one of those things that we were asking David about some of the unique features, you know, just as you would say in an Oregon Atlas put in the Pacific Crest Trail and so forth. What other sorts of trails? I mean, we do do a fair amount of mapping for other companies and they do all these overland routes that people

create. And so we figured there had to be one somewhere in there for the extreme recreationalists. So that one was in there. And then the other one that David Ked us into is the El Camino Real as well. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of an important one. California history and all. So pitfalls. Anybody want to tackle that? Bridger. You want to talk about a few pitfalls in and deciding to take this project on? Really, the only pitfall we ran into was COVID because it interrupted our ability to, like Neil said, get out there and drive the roads and field check it. Now, we still have plans to do that soon, likely before the end of this year. Just to confirm things, we continue to update our atlases every couple years.

So our fieldwork never ends. And as it comes time for a second edition, it'll get better than the first. And then the third will be better in the fourth. So you can expect this to improve over time. We like to say that we've been crowdsourcing since 1995 because we freely accept and openly invites any edits or feedback from our customers. All our information is in the back of the Atlas,

along with all of our other titles. So we look forward to compiling our list of edits for the next edition. And it's always something we like looking forward to. Well, that, that, you know, I've got this flagged right here to, to share. Our world is always in flux, thus map elements and conditions are constantly changing. Help us keep these current by sharing your expertise and notifying us of changes. We enthusiastically welcome comments and corrections. You know, you're feeling.

To that point, if I may, we've already received one from, well, it was from, David, who obviously keyed us off, but like Sam Felipe just became a municipality two days ago. It's its own thing now. It speaks to the how quickly influx things can become. Don't worry, David will send plenty of corrections. We're betting on it. David, you want to chime in? I can be a fun guy too, you know.

No, I appreciate the stream of corrections that you've sent me over the year. There's got to be somebody who's just not being what other people did before and saying, well, they haven't done their homework. And that's David Kier. He's the guy who's actually checking it all. I'm the Baja Egghead or nerd or whatever the title needs to be because I just love looking at maps. And it's like flying over the land that you love. And I started drawing maps as a kid to remember the places where we camped in Baja.

And so maps in Baja guidebooks and maps that I drew were just all around me in my office. You know, I've got three wall maps, two from Mike McMahon and one from an outfit out of Vancouver, Canada that produced a folding map that I had laminated. So wall maps and surrounding myself of maps just somehow entices me to look down. and then if I've traveled that road, which fortunately through Baja Bound's connection, was able to do extensively between 2016 and 2019, I was able to give fairly fresh input on roads. And everything changes. You know, the next season's tropical storm can wash out a road. And benchmark has just been wonderful about, you know, adding little notes and suggestions like,

the road up to Mission Guadalupe north of Mulejahe frequently gets washed out and they put a notation in there that just to that fact. And it's things like that and things that like Benchmark has on their Atlas that they welcome comments and edits. And they want to keep the map is up to date. And nothing is 100%. But we try, the more we try to get it close to that, the better the product will be and more enjoyment and functional have for everybody. out there. Yeah, but you're really killing the secondary market on this if you're making it better every new edition. Now, who's going to collect your first edition map if the second, third, fourth, and fifth editions are even better? You know, it's funny. A lot of our customers view

their atlases as collector items because they enter their own notes. They're full of memories and they keep them with them all the time in the car on the shelf. But we like to educate folks that mapping is like most things, a human endeavor. It's never going to be perfect. It's always going to improve if you're dedicated to it as we are. And if you want to have the best up-to-date travel experience, you're going to need the best up-to-date maps. And you don't have to replace them every two years when we do an update.

But every five years, every four or five years is a really good, guideline for folks that travel to a certain area off and keep your old ones on the on the bookshelf with your memories and notes inside and have your new one you know in the in the car but that's pretty good advice i i want to ask you um you'd mention field checking how does one get that job how do how do How do you field checkers map in real time? Tell me a little bit about what makes you guys different with your devotion to accuracy and actually having these things field checked. That is our number one most frequently asked question is how do I become a field checker?

That's another one resume we receive as well. Yes, very true. Take some unique skills. I'll let Neil speak to him. Yeah, it's funny that you ask in the sense that we have a guy out in southern Utah right now, field checking. And so what that essentially entails is him not only having a GPS, so we know where he is at all times just for safety. And, you know, we're also recording his breadcrumbs to find out where he's been. But he's out there recording and not just observing from, you know, behind the,

the windshield, as it were, he's also out interviewing as well, talking to any park ranger or any local expert in which he can flag down and potentially bribe with an Atlas or just wants to talk about geography and just so forth. So that's what he's presently doing right now. And this is becoming quite the hot topic because we're still trying to figure out what's going to happen with all the National Monument stuff in southern Utah. And as we have a reprint coming up, that's key to at least getting correct in the next edition, or at least current in the next edition. You know, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser down to Baja,

and when we go, we go with Baja Bound Insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use, Baja Bound Insurance, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. If I can't though, Michael, can I follow up with that for just a second? Go ahead. Another thing that we do in addition to field checking that we consider it a form of field checking is what we call desk checking.

Excuse me. And what we do, Tainland, we have an Army-trained aerial imagery analyst for who worked in Desert Storm years ago. And so he is one of our key guys that when it comes time to seeing what is in the field, we'll go out and he'll go out and peruse all the current. aerial surveys for the areas and double check those as well when we can't quite visit there or

you know if we have a question that we can't figure out from data alone so former field checking but we call it desk checking I think I just realized that an awful lot goes into these things an awful lot that the casual user doesn't think about how all this information gets transcribed, cross-checked, double-checked, and then printed and then improved upon in the next edition. That's really amazing, and it's a beautiful product, and I'm going to be excited to actually get it out and field-check this myself. Let's get to the final lightning round here and just talk about what your expectations were of creating this Baja Road and Recreation Atlas. How long did you discuss it before you've pulled the trigger to start producing it?

And then I think you guys have had a little bit of a moment here in the Baja world. People seem to be damned excited about this. So what were your expectations about that? Anyone wants to jump in, take it? Sure, I'll jump in on the product. you know, all of our atlases when we start a new state, they take two to three years from beginning to the release date. So we knew a lot of work was going to go into it. We knew there was demand for it because of folks like David, obviously, and with a lot of consumer requests that we

had had over the years. We did not expect for it to blow up and effectively sell out the way that it has in such a short period of time. In fact, we are in steps to initiate a quick reprint because we need more stock. And we actually didn't do a small print run by any means. We expected our supply to last for a year at least. And it's essentially gone in a couple of weeks. So the amount of demand, even though it was indicated upfront that there was a lot of demand, it's 10 times what we expected.

And we know that's a lot of pent up demand from there not being a good atlas of the area many years. But it's just been lights out for us. A home run we did not expect to hit this year. So it's been very exciting. And we're looking forward to potentially having, you know, a company retreat down in La Paz

or Ensonata or something as soon as we get a chance to. Take it. As soon as you get a chance to take a breath. Yeah. David can say, I told you so now. You did. I am so pleasantly surprised and happy.

Probably not too surprised, but it's very pleasant to see the reaction. At least me monitoring both Facebook and Baja forums, seeing their reaction. And it's been great. And I'm so happy for you guys. So I'm looking forward to seeing this grow. And it's great to hear that you plan future additions. So we know that there's a long-term future for this product, that it will be updated as new roads come in or things change.

It's really nice to hear. Yeah, I follow that. I would say not only are we looking forward to updating it, we're looking forward to it just evolving, as many of our titles have. I have a particular PowerPoint presentation. for our New Mexico Atlas, which was one of our first ones back in 95, and it's gone through 10 editions now.

And it's absolutely astounding just to see what has either been forced by marketing or technology or just the styles of the day, anyhow, the state of the art, I guess. So we're looking forward to it evolving and becoming even a bigger, better product as time goes by here. They all become a living thing. We look forward to seeing it grow. Yeah, well, let's do two things here. We're going to wrap it up. So I'd like you to tell people, tell the Slow Baja community,

where, if anywhere, is the best place for them to put in an order for a map, for a Baja California Road and Recreation Atlas. So that's the question that you'll answer in just a second. but, you know, I'm old fashion. I drive this 50-year-old truck. I only use paper maps. I learned in Baja, you always ask a local, what's the road look like past your place. Where do we go?

You know, can I get through on this vehicle, whatever the vehicle is that I'm driving at the time? You've got one of these handy-dandy new gizmos on the front of your, right on the front cover of your atlas that I can put my smartphone up to, and it gives me a whole bunch of digital stuff too. So can you jump into the digital side of this Atlas? I mean, we've only been booing and awing over the paper side, but can we talk about just the digital side for a second and then tell everybody where they should go if they want to get one of these guys? Sure. The QR codes that you'll find in the book will take you to a few different places.

We have sort of hidden web pages on our website that contain expanded information resources, that you can find. Some of it's from the rec guide itself. It's just an online form so that you can tap a website and it'll open up or tap a phone number and make a call.

So the QR codes are a nice way of kind of supplementing the printed book with some digital content. Now, in addition, there is a digital product that's derived from this printed Atlas. It's the Baja California Atlas landscape Maps. It's available now on the Avenza Maps app for iOS and Android. Avenza Maps is kind of the iTunes of Maps. It's a large place to shop for hundreds of thousands of maps. Many of them are

free. Many of them are not. Like many things, you get what you pay for. You have great map publishers there that sell digital versions of their maps to Avenza Maps. And effectively, it's like a PDF download. So it works offline, has a lot of great features in it, like placing waypoints and adding photographs or notes to it. And that product is basically the 40 pages of landscape maps from the book that are all tiled together as one seamless map. So that product is a single download and you get the entire Baja Peninsula, both states, and you can zoom in and get to the richest detail that we have here in the Atlas. Now, you don't get the recreation guides from the Atlas.

So the printed product, they're really meant to complement each other. The printed product is really a great planning tool for sitting down, looking at the recreation guides, getting those smaller-scale maps that show regions that kind of help you figure out how many miles is it between those two. points or and then you can zoom in with the landscape maps and really see that granular detail. I know that mine came through Baja bound insurance. They had pre-purchased a number of cases and were selling them as a service to their users. So that's how I got mine. Maybe you can tell us where the best place right now with all the hype is to find these, find this beautiful map.

Sure. You can find them on our website directly at Benchmarkmaps.com. Other online. venues to order the Atlas are Baja bound insurance. There's Discover Baja Travel Club. There is Amazon.com carries it as well. There are, we plan to have it on bookshel, on shelves and storage throughout the peninsula. In many towns, we have a distributor set up in Los Cabos, Baja books and maps that will be distributing it wholesale to retailers throughout. So I would say, you know, online, short term,

if you're in a rush to get there, ordered online at Benchmarkmaps.com, we'll get it to you quickly. If you have a little time to wait for it, you want to buy it locally. Give it a few weeks, it'll be on shelves. Just give us an email or a call if you have any question. Well, I'm not sure that I have any real cartography

field checking skills to offer here, but I could load up a couple of cases of these and drop them off on my trip down the peninsula next time if you need an informal distributor. Absolutely. This is when you guys are supposed to be chuckling to yourself. Neil, you should be chuckling out loud right now. How many times did I get?

They used to call those guys trunk slammers and that's what they used to do back in the days kind of with the Fuller Brushman, but that's how that maps used to be distributed like that. Let's not reinvent the wheel. Hey, I really enjoyed getting behind the scenes a little bit on how this beautiful Baja California Road and Recreation Atlas came to be from benchmark maps. And I'm delighted that you guys have come on board as a new sponsor. So thank you very much for that.

And I really look forward to having this in the Baja visitor, Ted Donovan's ample lap open saying, where are we going, buddy? And having him, my in-person navigator, tell me we're following this little trail right here. and we're going from here to there. And look, there's a taco stand. You actually have taco stands in some spots on this map. That's incredible. David, did you plug in some of those?

Oh, no. I think most of taco stands, I was presently surprised to see on there. We made sure that places like cow patties and sherrys at Bayesuncione. Oh, that. I saw that. Yeah, we made sure those were on there too.

You know. How does one become a cartels? because I know, David, that was probably, you know, in your wheelhouse for some time when you were. Yeah, it was my profession choice in my early 20s and irrigation got in the way. It changed me. Well, Neil, how does one become a cartographer? What was your part? It really just started back.

I knew what I wanted to go to college for. And I always enjoyed drawing, you know, when I was younger and wanted to make a career, I but I didn't think I wanted to get my MFA. I didn't believe I was that creative that I could rely completely upon my creativity and, you know, as an artist. But I was also interested in civil engineering to some degree, but I didn't want to learn

how to use a T-square and how to, I didn't want to be a draftsman. And so I felt like this was kind of the best of both worlds that it kind of gave me a subject material in which to focus on, but yet it allowed me to express my creativity on top of that. So it was kind of a nice blend of both of those. If I may tease one more thing.

I mean, not that necessarily needs to make the podcast, but I know David's been chomping at the bit. We are right on the cusp of having a wall map. Yay. So we will obviously give David the right of first critique. So we will be talking to you, David, shortly about that kind of thing. I'm so happy to hear that. Using a wall map, when you say wall map, what does that mean?

How big of a map is that? Is that like the folding map that you would have in your glove box? It's not a folded map. This is going to be more presentational. It's 30 inches by 40 inches or 48, excuse me, 48 inches by 30 inches. So this is frame it and put it on your wall. Exactly. Awesome.

Well, you know, again, I don't know if it's an age-related thing or not, but it's just so great to see the map folded out in front of you or on the wall to say, oh, well, see, we were here and then we were going to go there, but then we ended up going here instead rather than just trying to scroll on a screen. Oh, yes, there's a big world of difference between electronic maps and physical maps for sure. Oh, definitely, yeah. I mean, just like you described, the way you socialize around them. All right. Well, guys, thanks a bunch for making some time to talk about this. And I look forward to seeing Baja in person unfold from the pages of my benchmark map into dust in front of me. So thanks again. And look forward to talking to you all soon.

You got it. Thanks for bringing us along. And we look forward to hearing about your adventures on your podcast. All right. Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. All right. And David, well done. I appreciate you getting the details right all the time, and I look forward to talking to you about some other Baja subject soon. Sounds like a good idea to me. Thank you. All right, everybody. Have a great day. Take care. Thanks. Bye, guys. Bye, bye. Slow Baja's wardrobe is provided by Taylor Stitch. Responsibly built for the long haul, Taylor Stitch makes clothes that wear in, not out. Wherever your adventure takes you, Taylor Stitch has you covered.

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