The initial approach I took was to use Google My Maps: this is a really cool tool for creating a custom map without any coding needed (yes, I know – that doesn’t sound like much fun :-). For instance, you can set up your placemarks and link them with a route, and when individual places are clicked it shows a nice sliding info panel.
I started out with creating individual routes between places, but then ended up creating a single one for the whole tour. As much as anything to see the total length: it showed we’ll be travelling upwards of 75,000 km! Crazy.
I like many of the aspects of My Maps, but ultimately wanted more control for this particular project. Part of this is about integrating live tracking data, which we’ll see in an upcoming post. So I exported the map to KML (there’s a layer of indirection you may need to overcome by then loading the embedded KML reference) and then renamed this to XML so that I could open it in Excel and easily copy & paste the placemark…