Once upon a time, not so long ago, if you wanted to chart out route maps, or mark where branches were or other matters of interest, you'd track down a large scale wall map, get out the marker pens and carefully proceed to highlight whatever you needed.

There is an easier way.  Try Google Maps.  Specifically, when you look at Google Maps, take a look at the "My Maps" option.  You will need to have a Google login, which is relatively easy to create.

Once you are have a Google password and are logged in, you can 'create' a new map.  Move the map to find the right size and view to cover the area of interest, zoom in and start marking it up.  You can add 'pins', lines and areas. 

For example, like many others, I am training to run the upcoming half-marathon.  Curious to know how far my various routes are, I've drawn them in Google Maps.  I started with some fairly rough lines, then zoomed in, grabbed the 'mid points' of each line and started moving them closely onto the contours of the streets, and continued doing so until I had a close approximation of the routes.  Google let me mark each route with a different colour, and it tells me how long each route is. I can get a satellite map if I want, or a terrain map.

Likewise, I've been able to create a map to highlight where all our KARE contract clients are. 

There are all sorts of uses for this, and while there a bunch of irritating shortcomings (e.g. you can't seem to create copies of maps - you always seem to have to start from scratch, and they don't seem to embed easily into "Google Sites"), nonetheless, it is a great way of creating personal maps quickly.