Valley
Ventures Mapping LLC is a (very) small Michigan based company owned
by Jeramey Valley.
I formed VVMapping in 2007 to provide accurate and detailed maps
for the recreational pursuits that I personally enjoy - mainly Off-Road
Vehicles and Snowmobiling. I'm an avid Dual Sporter (street licensed
dirt bike) and put thousands of miles of seat time in each year.
The traversing of remote two track forest roads, ORV trails and
snowmobile trails is a pure joy, whether it's on a motorcycle, ATV,
truck or sled. My family and I enjoy camping and sharing in all
of these activities.
When I started putting Dual Sport routes together I was dismayed
at the options for maps. There were no copyright free maps that
I could easily put my routes on and make copies for friends and
event participants. Not only that, but there were no maps out there
that had accurate information on just where the trails were. Sure,
there were maps available, but they either didn't have the detail,
didn't have enough coverage and almost always did not show where
the trail was with much accuracy.
Our Dual Sport routes needed to know where the trail crossed or
shared a road, so we'd know where we could join a trail or avoid
two-way traffic. None of the maps helped us with that respect. This
lead to me making my own map-base and maps from scratch. Most of
the map base was devised from TIGER data or the State's version
of the same (public data, by the way). Once the map base was out
of the way, I could start integrating GPS data into it to show the
courses we were using as well as the ORV and snowmobile trails.
Most all of these trails are not shown on any map, let alone in
any combination of roads/towns/forest roads/trails/rivers.
Some of the folks in the CCC noted all of the maps I was churning
out for various events and other things. They saw the opportunity
to update their map book of ORV trails with GPS recorded data. Since
I was already an active member of that organization, it made sense
to apply my tools and data set to their needs. At the time we started
I didn't have tracks for many of the ORV trail systems, but used
their map book as my excuse to get out there and ride. The CCC was
able to help fill in some of the gaps with donated trail data from
a few different sources. Some of that was great and some was not
so hot. Since the time of that first publishing, I have been able
to acquire my own tracks for those trail system - it's good to be
out riding!
I do enjoy making the maps, especially the data recording portion.
I would like to give all of the products away, but the cost to produce
them is not that low. I'll strive to offer as much "free"
stuff on here as I can and offer for sale the value added products
that I hope many people find worth the price.
I really like having the paper map in my hand match the background
map on my GPS. Not match as in showing the same State or county,
but match as in showing the exact same roads, road names, water
features and trails. I know first hand how difficult it is trying
to interpret one map to another and not seeing the same roads between
the two. This is why I build both paper and GPS maps.
We are proud to sponsor/support the following:
I'm always interested in hearing from you on how to improve things
here. Feel free to drop me a note.
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