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2017/03/20

Governmental Overlays - Complete

Yesterday, I finished the map overlays for most governmental and non-governmental reservations on, or along the Buckeye Trail (BT).  Waypoints had to be added for those that didn't have any.  For most that did, their PDF format maps had to be converted to a JPG image.  Then some had to be cropped in Microsoft Paint in order to make them easier to overlay in Google Earth Pro.  But before I did that, I had them uploaded to the cloud so that their locations were on the internet and not specific to the structure of my computer's file system.

For any waypoints, instead of cropping banner images, I just looked up the park agencies on Facebook and used their image location as the waypoint icons.  With the help of the BTA GIS/ GPS Depository, prospective hikers can get a glimpse of what's around the trails.  They might want to go to a campsite, restaurant or lodging and may find that a park district's trail could get them there faster?  And on most maps, except ones from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources - Divison of Parks, they can trace the path in Google Earth and upload it to their GPS's.  But without being able to compare all the information in one place, it might be difficult to do with several different sources.

These overlays aren't the whole project.  They a part of something larger.  I'm going to re-write the BT's on-road tracks so that theres one between every intersection.  There's roughly 720 miles on on-road trail.  The other half is on-road, so I'm going to delete my section tracks down until I'm left with the off-road reservations.  Then delete them down into off-road intersections.

Piece of cake.  That off-road is the other half of the BT's 1,440 total mileage. that I don't really have to worry so much about.  As for the on-road, I'm planning on getting my pen tablet configured so I can just drop path anchors and terminators.

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