As soon as tonight's show ended I rewound my DVR back to Rachel's interview with Richard Engel and tried to follow along with Google Maps to see if I could get a better sense of the area where the events took place. It turns out the satellite imagery of Syria is pretty detailed. So, for example, you can see the tractor trailer trucks lined up at the Bab Al Hawa border crossing where Richard entered Syria from Turkey. Also, most of the photos I've seen of the war in Syria were taken in urban settings, so it's interesting to see how abruptly the towns give way to farmland in that part of the country.
As a technical note, I notice some of my notations on the map don't fit in the window well, so I recommend clicking the link to the larger version. Also, be aware that the points on this map are not meant to be precise. The markers are placed based only on town names and Richard's gestures at the map. Even though Google provides nice pointy markers, they're not actually pointing at anything in this case.
