Where to buy topo maps locally?

[Sevens]

Hey all,
Wanting to do a little day hiking with my kids. I have no clue where to buy a topo map here in Boulder. Does REI have them? Can I get them from the forest service?

Thanks for the help.
-Sevens-

[Tendertoe]

USGS
Follow the directions on the right hand side.

Free to download - My kinda price or you can order hard copies too.

[ringtail-THFKAfood]

The USGS has a map store at the Federal Center between Kipling & Sims and 6th Avenue & Alameda.

[Crismateski]

the REI by me has them. Not sure if they still have it but they also had a computer that would allow you to select an area and print a national geo topo map.

C.

[grampa]

REI should have a good selection of topos for your area. Mine has both the USGS 7.5 minute series, and various independently produced topo maps of wider areas. Sometimes the ones that cover a wider area are more helpful, as you can orient off peaks outside of the limited 7.5 minute area.

[Gqgeek81]

Not local but I used Mytopo for the first time recently and was pleased with the product.

You start out with a red outline against a map. You can select what size to make the map and what orientation and then drag the outline wherever which is great for areas that cover several quads such as Uwharrie in NC which would require multiple quads to cover the Uwharrie trail with most of the map space being outside the park. I had it printed on vinyl with UTM squares drawn in and left off the lat/lon lines for ease of use with my grid tool.
Nice map, but it was also rather pricey too.

[JaxHiker]

I didn't realize REI had the ability to print in the store. That's pretty slick. I usually order from USGS but called OfficeMax for a quote to print the downloaded jpg. They wanted $15!

[bcaron]

You MUST check out this link. I'm amazed how unknown this is. It links with Google maps, has topo, satellite images etc, seamlessly. All online for free.

http://mapper.acme.com/

[ShadowAlpha]

@bcaron - thanks for the link!

[Gqgeek81]

Mobile Atlas creator also links to many programs. Its a stand alone free program that must be installed. The list of map sources is huge although most of them are outside the US.

I'm sure I've only scratched the surface of what you can do in it, but I use it to create OSM compatible maps where the different zoom layers are from different sources. For instance level 13 or so I use Google Maps and use it mostly for street navigation. As I get closer I switch to Google Satellite and at some point toss in a Googe Terrain and a Terraserver layer before switching back to the Sat. layer for the closest level or two.

This is all downloaded and compiled and I run it on my Palm Pre with an app called Map Tool which will load the basemap and work in airplane mode saving my battery. We used this in Linville Gorge last fall including overlaying a GPX track of the trails we were on and a GPX cache list for some geocaching. All in all it was pretty awesome what I could do. Back this up with a topomap with UTM grids and you're good to go.