Directions: how far is that parcel, really?

Directions is point-to-point routing built into the map. You set a start and an end, press Get directions, and Land Owl draws the route on the same satellite imagery you were already looking at, with the drive time and distance in the panel beside it.

It answers the question that straight-line distance never does. Rural parcels are separated from the nearest town by rivers, ridges and county-road networks that do not run in straight lines, so the honest measure of "how far out is it" is road miles and minutes, not a ruler.

It routes to parcels, not just addresses. Click a parcel — including one with no street address — and Land Owl uses its recorded location as the destination, so you can measure the drive to raw land the same way you would to a house.

Anyone whose next decision depends on whether a property is worth the drive, or on how far it sits from something that matters — a highway, a town, a yard, a mill, a job site.

• Land buyers screening a shortlist before spending a Saturday driving it
• Developers and site selectors checking distance to a corridor, an interchange, or a labour market
• Foresters and contractors working out haul distance and crew travel to a tract
• Agents and brokers answering "how far is it from town?" with a number instead of a guess
• Anyone comparing two parcels where the map distance and the road distance disagree

Open Directions from the Tools menu on the map (or press R). There are two ways to set each end of the route, and several shortcuts that fill one in for you.

1. Set the start and the end

   Type an address or place into either field and pick from the suggestions, or use the crosshair button to drop the point straight onto the map. Drop the start and Land Owl arms the end for you automatically.

2. Or start from what you were already doing

   Right-click anywhere on the map for "Directions from here" and "Directions to here". Search results carry a route icon that sets the destination. A parcel's Actions menu has a Directions entry that sets that parcel as the destination and — if you allow location access — your current position as the start.

3. Choose how you are travelling

   Drive, Walk or Bike. On Drive you can also set Leave Time — now, or a preset like Monday 8:00 AM or Friday 5:30 PM — to see what the trip looks like at the hour you would actually make it.

4. Read the result

   Up to three routes come back with the fastest one flagged, each with its time, distance and the roads it runs on. Click an alternate on the map to compare it. A one-line traffic verdict sits under the selected route on Drive.

5. Take it with you, or keep it

   Apple Maps and Google Maps buttons hand the same start and end off for turn-by-turn navigation. On Basic and above, Save pins the route to the current map so it is there when you reopen it.

It does not give you turn-by-turn navigation, and it is not two points plus stops — it is exactly two points, a start and an end, with no waypoints in between and no route optimisation. Land Owl is for planning the trip, not driving it, which is why the Apple Maps and Google Maps buttons are there.

It routes on public roads only. There are no off-road, trail, ATV or truck profiles, and it knows nothing about gates, private drives, or whether an easement is passable in a pickup. Where a parcel sits off the road network, Land Owl says so plainly — it draws a dashed straight line for the last stretch and tells you how long it is — rather than inventing a track that may not exist.

Distances are in miles only, there is no route export (no GPX, no PDF), and a saved route is stored as the request and its summary rather than as a drawn path — so it is re-fetched each time it renders, and people you share a map with will not see the line.