use google maps to find trails!!!
 

.....just type in any street address you know of and go from there...

Depends on the trail. Viewing Montreal, you can sort of make out the jogging path on Mount Royal, but the trail through the wooded park near work is completely obscured by trees.

finding trails through google maps is tough due to trees. What I do is scroll around my area in map mode looking for green spots (parks) then zoom in on the park and it will usually say the name. Then google the name and get the park's website, which says if bikes are allowed, what kind of trails they have, etc...

Then I got a magellan explorist 500 GPS with 3d Topo software, it came pre-programmed with 30,000 trails from trails.com I haven't needed to do the "satellite scan search" in a while. it also renders the topography using 3d acceleration. it doesn't have maps of the trails though, just the trail heads. but i can then google them and find maps.

I found a shortcut through a neighborhood with Google maps, but all the trails I ride have low-res coverage so it's not much help. I can see my house, and once I noticed I had forgotten to shovel my walk...

I use local.live's birds eye view, and helps a lot.

you can usually see power lines pretty good on those views as they kill the grass under most of them here,,, only problem is sometimes there are 100ft cliffs that look like flat land on those views.