Los Angeles Thomas Guide

Los Angeles Thomas Guides are a necessity for anyone living in the Los Angeles area, period. LA is nothing but suburban areas and small towns connected by an increasingly crowded freeway system and thousands of surface streets. Having a Los Angeles Thomas Guide won't make traffic go away, but it will let you find your way around this busy metropolis.

When I moved to southern California, I bought a Los Angeles Thomas Guide--commonly called the Thomas Guide--just to get a lay of the land. Driving in traffic for the first time is daunting in LA, and the Thomas Guide was a godsend. The only thing better than having the guide at home was receiving another one as a gift; that one lives in the car and gets used more than the first.

The Los Angeles Thomas Guide: Don't Leave Home without It

Every car in southern California should come equipped with a bottle of water, a cell phone, and the Los Angeles Thomas Guide--you'll need all three. These guides are more than mere map books: they also list the hundreds of streets that have on-ramp and off-ramp access to the dozen or so major freeways. The guide is an inch thick and each page is full of helpful, up-to-date information.

My original Los Angeles Thomas Guide, the one I keep at home, has a special place on the bookshelf because I often use it to plan routes and easily find locations. The large area map covers the whole county and is divided by a grid into about a hundred smaller zones; each of these smaller areas correspond to a page in the guide with a very detailed map. This page and grid system makes finding any area a breeze--getting there in a car is a whole other story.