United States

Speed limit signs read "SPEED LIMIT." If one says only "SPEED," it's Oregon.

Speed limits are given in MPH, and roadside signs use miles too. Sign backs are often flat.

The upside-down triangular YIELD sign and the ONE WAY sign both have text on them.

Centerlines often use a double yellow line. The same is true in Canada.

Mailboxes are blue.

Trash bins lined up in front of houses are a common sight.

National flags are flown often, so moving around usually turns one up. The same is true in Canada.

Many major companies are headquartered in the US, and their signs and logos are all over town: Waste Management and Republic Services (waste collectors, with logos on trash bins), Chevron and Citgo (gas stations), Target (retail), and more.

STOP signs are generally placed where a smaller road meets a bigger one. If you start out in a maze-like residential neighborhood, avoid roads where you see the back of a STOP sign (the smaller road) and head toward roads where you see its face — that leads to a bigger road.

Far from the US mainland there are also US-territory islands and other places tied to the US.

Interstate highway signs (blue with a red "cap") use even numbers for east-west routes and odd numbers for north-south routes, with higher numbers toward the northeast. Routes whose numbers are multiples of 5 tend to be longer than others.

• North-south interstates are odd-numbered, with lower numbers toward the west
• East-west interstates are even-numbered, with lower numbers toward the south

A sign with a fraction might mean West Virginia. "23/1" means the first road branching off "23."

Missouri has signs with capital letters. If a sign reads "A" or "V," it might be Missouri.

Low-trained apple trees in a row on posts and wire, with hail nets or wind machines (for frost protection) standing nearby, mean Washington State. It accounts for about 68% of US apple production.

Honestly, you can't tell what's growing just by looking at the field. If you see a peanut plant or a distinctively shaped silo, Georgia is a safe bet. It produces over 50% of the nation's peanuts.

Low, rectangular plots flooded with water and spread out, though Street View shots of flooded fields aren't that common. Wisconsin accounts for 59% of the national total.

Orchards, nut trees, and vineyards planted in neat rows to the horizon, with the Sierra Nevada to the east and the Coast Ranges to the west, mean California's Central Valley. Over half of the nation's fruits, vegetables, and nuts come from here.

A digging machine or storage building (a long, white, quonset-hut-shaped warehouse) means a potato field. Idaho produces 32% of the nation's potatoes and Washington 23%, together more than half.

Two to eight windowless, long, single-story warehouse buildings lined up together might be a poultry farm. Most common in the South, especially North Carolina.

Bare-dirt plots divided into small fenced pens, packed with cattle, with feed piles and silos beside them, mean a feedlot. Nebraska, Texas, and Kansas together account for about two-thirds of the national total.

Corn production is heavy along the Corn Belt. If you see corn, it's safer to lean east of center rather than west.

Soybean distribution closely follows corn.

Rice paddies are found mainly along the Mississippi River in Arkansas (which accounts for half of national production), in specific areas of California, and in Louisiana. If a utility pole has a yellow line, it's northern California; if not, it's along the Mississippi.

You probably won't see the cotton fields themselves, but there might be white cotton fluff lying on the roadside.

Sugarcane fields are limited to the area around Florida and specific parts of Louisiana, with roughly similar production in each. Louisiana's growing area may have few Street View roads.

Wheat is grown in the Great Plains states (Kansas, North Dakota, Montana, and so on) and in the northwest states of Washington and Idaho. This is offset from the corn and soybean heartland (Iowa, Illinois).

An orchard of short, dark-green evergreens planted at even spacing means citrus. California accounts for about 84% of US citrus, Florida about 13%. If the photo was taken around fall, you might even see fallen oranges on the ground.