Google Earth Community: Bigfoot Reports - Comprehensive Mapping Project

Outstanding file you've put together here! I spend quite a bit of time with my son going through and reading the various accounts over the centuries worth (!) of sightings.
One that I was reading about today caught my eye, however, for several seeming inaccuracies, and I thought I would let you know. In Report # 15694, the witness stated that they were driving south on Florida's Turnpike, yet you have the placemark pinned to one section of the toll road 'beltway' that they're strangling Orlando with, Tollroad 429, which only runs from Apopka northwest of Orlando to a southern terminus on Interstate 4 by Celebration, just west of the Disney sprawl. The highway you've indicated crosses the Turnpike about a mile farther down, but I'm through that area quite a bit and can tell you, there's no real large swampy stretch along the 429 such as he refers to. It's rolling countryside, fairly 'hilly' (for central Florida) with some citrus groves, oak and pine tree stands and well drained pasturelands for the most part, even though Lake Apopka is just a few hundred yards off to the side of the road. The situation of the placemark to where its probable location actually should be is no more than 2 or 3 miles as the crow flies to the WSW, as the Turnpike at that particular point in its traverse of the state is actually running absolute west to east for about 3 miles, though all the signs that refer to it have South and North Turnpike on them.
The other thing that stuck in my mind (and this one is for the BFRO or whomever took the report) is his claim that they were going to have a look at the Waterford Lakes Mall. Now they may have and in all likelihood meant the West Oaks Mall, as Waterford Lakes is way the heck and gone East on the complete other side of Orange County and Orlando, just south of the University of Central Florida, on Alafaya Trail. And it's more of a collection of strip stores, big anchor stores, free standing parcels with various restaurants and so forth on them, all sharing one vast parking lot. The West Oaks Mall, on the other hand, is a true indoor mall between Ocoee and it's immediate neighbor to the west, Winter Garden.
But here is where things get a little hazy; he claims that the Ocoee exit was upcoming as he travelled south(east, in truth, if on the Tpk). But for there to be a large enough swampy area such as he described, they'd have had to be west( north) of Winter Garden as well, where the Turnpike again turns toward true north, so that town's exit to the Turnpike would be coming up first. The Ocoee exit and the intersection of Toll Road 429 and SR 50 are all jumbled up into this big confusing spider's web of crossing super overpasses and roadway and space, and to get to Ocoee proper from the Turnpike means you have to get off of the Tpk and travel about a mile east on SR 50 to reach the town limits.
I guess that the thing that needs to happen here is, the BFRO need to get back in touch with this person and find out for certain which roadway they were actually driving down, so that you could place the marker with greater accuracy. It may not look it from the air, but nestled in amongst those clusters of tree greenery are quite a few homes, meaning that the area where the marker is placed right now is populated much heavier than it may appear. I don't think a BF could go undetected in that area on the southeast edge of Lake Apopka very easily, even in 2006 they were building a great many new homes to accomodate the folks who want a home 'in the country' but also desire a commute of less than 30 minutes into Orlando to work. The southwest edge of the lake, on the other hand, opens up quite a bit more and seems to be the more likely spot for the placemark. If you had an email I could send a screenshot to, I'd show you where I think they mean, if, at the very base of this whole argument, they were actually driving on the Turnpike and not the 429 Tollroad.

Sorry to get so wordy!

Neill
crash_clavin@REMOVEMEyahoo.com