NCT Mapping Project Complete

I just found the easy way to make digital mile markers.  I used http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_input and in the "[+] Show Advanced Options," there's a field for "Add equal-interval tickmarks as waypoints."  It can do it distance, or time, so I just loaded my chapter tracks one by one and set the interval to "0.1" and it gave me mile markers every tenth of a mile.  I'm several days ahead of schedule now.  That was ridiculously easy.  It took about 7 years to to finish reorganizing the NCTA's data.

I'm now heading into the final phase of my project, which is to create a mock hiker written document.  That will simulate a thru, end-to-end hike on the North Country Trail by the minimum daily mileage needed to cover it within about a 7 month window of execution.

Digital Mile Markers - NCT Pennsylvania Complete

I re-labeled the digital mile markers for the Allegheny National Forest Chapter of the North Country Trail Association's span.  That completes them for the NCT in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

NCT Pennsylvania Partially Re-labled

I only had part of a day to re-label mile markers with their mileages.  So, I completed the task for Wampum, Butler, Clarion Chapters, the official route through the Allegheny Valley and Rachel Carlson Trails (NCT Concurrency).  That's one marker for parking, campsites and lodging, or the intersections to them over 200.73 more miles of the North Country Trail.

My tracks for the Superior Hiking Trail is in four parts.  And I've never gotten the whole thing to merge with an elevation profile.  That concurrency is about 268 miles.  My Finger Lakes Trail track is merged together, but Google Earth's elevation profile won't read about 100 miles of what it reports as it's length in Rt Click-> Properties-> Measurements.  Normally, I don't like to merge anything larger than about 120 miles long because Google Earth is more prone to errors.

Finished Mile Marker Positions - NCT and Motorhome Update

I finished placing the position of the digital mile markers for the entire North Country Trail.  But I'm going to take a break from the next phase of the project because I now need to track every alternate by-pass and spur along the American Discovery Trail.  I only got the main route last year.  I suppose it's probably going to take me until the end of the week to do that.  Releasing North Country's data should take place about a week before Valentine's Day.  That's just for the GPS data that's most relevant to hikers.  Getting the mock hike written simulation done by then... maybe, maybe not.  That could be tight?

The motorhome runs.  Even better than it ever has and it currently has a broken EGR valve.  I already have the replacement, but it's nut is ceased to it's right side breather tube that leads to the cylinders in the engine.  My family mechanic friend is waiting to take a hot torch to it to get it off. 

Meanwhile, we'll be dismounting the drive axle and taking it to a friend's garage where the U joints can be mounted.  Right now, the drive axle is disconnected from the rear one because my old U joint was very corroded and the wrecker (tow truck) had to take it apart in order not to destroy the drive train about 18 months ago.

NCT Minnesota Mile Markers Placed

The position of the digital mile markers in Minnesota are in place.  I wasn't going to overlay the state forest maps, but I changed my mind.  Then I realized that I didn't account for Minnesota DNR's camping shelters, so I went back and cataloged those, other backpack sites and parking areas.  At that point, I determined that I needed to go back through all three national forest websites and determine if I was missing campsites and picnic areas (parking)?  Minnesota really took a while and I'm glad that it's over. 

This state was kinda hard.  All the waypoints adding up and the shapes of six MN DNR divisions and 3 national forests, plus their roads and trails was really taxing The Robot.  I'm a volunteer.  With Wisconsin and Pennsylvania remaining, the worst is over for now.  The hardest part now will be backing down the track on the North Country's concurrency with Finger Lakes.  That's a 429 mile track with frequent markers.  I'm lucky I got 429 miles to merge.  You could probably thank Finger Lake's GIS for that.  They made it snap together so well.

P Areas NCT in the Adirondacks and NYS Mile Markers

I completed the placemarks/ waypoints for the parking areas along the North Country Trail in the Adirondack Park.  I also finished placing the mile marker positions for the trail in New York State.

Data Extracted - ND, WI & MN, Relabeled C Data and Mile Markers

I extracted the trails and roads necessary to reach campsites and lodging along the North Country Trail in North Dakota, Wisconsin and Minnesota.  It was necessary for the placement of placemarks to make mile markers in the various states.  I cut it from NFS's data and pasted it in to mine.  But I don't think I really need to have that at hand.  Right now, all I need to do just display NFS's data and then put a placemark down.  I noticed that Michigan's NCTA mile markers were going in the westbound direction, while North Dakota's were in the eastbound.  I'm now going to make my markers westbound. 

All you do is open the properties of one of my chapter/ affiliate tracks with the "measurements" tab showing and backspace from the end of the track until I come upon a campsite, campground, lodging, or a road or trail that leads to those, then record the mileage in the preset placemarks as I go.  All measurements that don't show a decimal point, or those that are really close together will need to be read in inches, then divided by 63,360 (inches in a mile) to get a decimal.   If the measurement is a double digit number that has a decimal smaller than 0.1, Google Earth doesn't even bother reading it.

I also re-labeled all of the unnamed campsites from the point data issued by the NCTA.  So far, it's all for my personal records.

Dispersed Camping Waypoints - NCT NY

I'm pretty convinced that the GPS camping information is pretty much compiled for the North Country Trail in New York State.  The re-formating of the commercial campground and lodging waypoint labels sill has to be done.  I determined that I might be able to program a series of commands and keystrokes on my gaming keypad to speed that up.  There's a number of redundant waypoints that were a result of my search and save method that need to be eliminated.  But today, I'm focused on dispersed, or backcountry camping.

  I determined that when I start the mile markers, that I'll use the dispersed "on" and "off" signals that I devised as to where to put down a mile marker.  If I have markers there and a dispersed campsite on the mock hiker simulation occurs between them, I won't have measure very much from the last one.  In fact, I'll probably add to the markers as I do this.

Log 03/23/2017

I just extracted the off-road track on 7 of 26 sections.  It's been going a little slower today.  But I found new transit off of Scioto Trail Section, Point 09 from Ahoy Transport, LLC out of Vinton County.  The only problem is that the hiker would have to walk 3.0 miles on US-50.  That would reach a radio tower on Dixon Mill Rd.  While I don't suppose the vehicle would pull in.  But it's on a lesser used road and the radio tower is just a good landmark.

After learning that the Buckeye Trail Association could have some differences in accounting map mileages, and it may be possible that either their's or my data is off, I went ahead and tallied it's total mileage.  Pay close attention to the date of this log.  Buckeye Trail re-routes often.  With my maps and tracks being as updated as possible, I my data shows the trail's total length to be 1,445.21 miles with an average section track variance of +0.0504 miles beyond the Map Team's numbers.  If I were to continue to back down the tracks to make mile markers, in the past, I've only done it with a variance of +/- 0.2 miles per section.

Digital mile markers could help prospective hikers.  Along with parking, camping, lodging data all in one place, there'd be no more guess work and measuring. Planing hikes would be a snap.  My GPS tracks for the BT are probably in condition now?

Digital mile markers are a lot of work, but they're worth it in the end.  And that's because in Google Earth, you have open the properties menu with the "measurements" tab up to have access and back down track.  Every time you reach a desired mileage, you have to close the menu and then put down a placemark.  In accordance with my data, on the Whipple Section, that has to be performed 58 times.  And the backing down part is what's time consuming.  You have to back space it at a controlled rate, or Google Earth could easily overshoot the mark.

In other things, I've been thinking about my 5th installment towards a Household Life Membership in the Buckeye Trail Association.  It's coming up early next month.  For the installment plan, I may have found that money orders from the US Post Office might be better than the Money Grams for other that I've been using.  Apparently, they never expire or devalue.  I have a PO Box, so I'll have to verify this soon.  There's only 10 installments, so #5 is half way.

I looks like I'll be re-building The Cramper next month.  I'm thinking about something lighter and cheaper.  But I have to go by the home improvement store to try and find a way to temporarily seal it to the tailgate frame.

Sometime in the next month or two, I need to start gathering supplies for trail promotion in SE Ohio.

Log 2015121203

I finished the digital mile markers for all 26 sections on the Buckeye Trail.  15 of them are based on modified tracks whose length measurement does not agree with the Buckeye Trail Association's Map Team official totals.  The other 11 do.

There could be a number of reasons for this. First is that the GIS and the Map Team's measurement were taken independently.  While the surveyors wheel probably stayed on the road's surface as much as possible so that I could get the most traction, some of the GIS on-road tracks were taken as far into the right of way as legally possible.  Second, it's possible that one of them might be incorrect off-road.  Third, my tracks are "modified."  Meaning that I used Google Maps to recreate the on-road, then merged them with the GIS's off-road.  Who knows what that could have done.  And finally, I may not have merged the sections correctly.  On many of the sections, I stopped being so meticulous about preping to merge the sections.  So some of the anchors on the merged track might actually correspond to it overlapping and I wouldn't know?  Finally, some of the tracks appear to parallel the road by 20ft or so. But that could just be caused by light refraction in the satellite imagery and the only way to prove that is to hike it in person on the most ideal day with my hand GPS and have it to set record a track on the most discriminate setting.  Then get it back to my computer and compare.

The My Places are now saved to Google Earth as well as to a KML file on my cloud storage. At this point, I can now proceed with routing a mock hiker for the 10 Mile Per Day Continuous Hikes w/o Transit.  Last night, The Robots CPU kept exceeding 122°F/ 50°C.  After about 54°F, the system would interrupt my movie and shut down the computer.  My guess is that my CPU was overheating.  There's not a lot of dust caked up inside the chassis.  So the CPU might be going terminal now?

Log 2015121001

Errors were discovered in my modified Scioto Trail (North Country & American Discovery Trails concurrent), Caesar Creek (North Country Trail concurrent), and Akron Section - Buckeye Trail tracks.  Their solution will simply be a matter of using copies of 3 tracks each, deleting one to a point just before the error and the second one to a point just after.  Then using the 3rd as a basis to trace from the first track to the second and merging them together.

I now have mileages for needed points on all tracks that don't conform to the BTA Map Team official section lengths.  Most of these are off by about 0.4 miles, so I won't give this data out to somebody to rely upon.  But for OTHR's 10 Mile Continuous Hikes and routing 20/ 15 mile per day thru hikers, it should be fine.  Other than that, I have 8 remaining sections tracks that do conform and their map & guide points already to go.  They're just waiting to be converted into their stated mileages.  Once done, I'll plot a few more points for likely intersections, get their mileages and these can be relied on.  One section that remains is the West Union Section.  But since it's almost entirely on road and I used Google Maps for those portions, I'm sure that it's correct and I intend on making it's digital mile markers based on it.

Unofficially, the Buckeye Trail is 1,440 miles long and is about 50% off-road.  I've heard that the North Country Trail's off-road footprint higher.  And the American Discovery Trail's is unknown to me at the moment.  They all add up to be about 1,732 miles total in Ohio.  With the exception of the Wayne National Forest, all other camping and lodging amenities are in fixed locations.

So, the hard part is over and the rest should be a breeze.  This is going to make expediting the 10 Mile Continuous Hikes Without Transit document easier now.  The difference between the with and without is that with transit, it's easier to use Buckeye's stated mileages on the paper maps in comparison with OTHR's digital data because transit tends to yield more options.  Without transit, camping and lodging amenities are much more fixed, so I have to get (or squeeze) every 10th of a mile that I possibly can in some places to route a mock hiker from one amenity to another and help make the consecutive day count longer.  When it comes to different audiences, such as easy going, nature lovers, elder, entry level hikers, or people who just like a shorter day, it's these streaks that matter.  This document is a question of how well can these distance trail agencies in Ohio do it?

Log 2015120302

Correction... I have 11 of 26 working BT section tracks who's measurements agree with the BTA Map Team's total mileages.  This is good for the 10 Mile Continuous Hikes Without Transit document because it's going to speed up the creation of the digital mile markers that I need to use for it.

Log 2015120301

Using Google Earth to create "digital mile markers" for a large distance trail, such as the Buckeye would take a considerable amount of time.  At first, I was attempting to do both whole miles and intersections for all 26 sections.  And I found it to be best to do them separately so I wouldn't make as many mistakes.  Well, I wouldn't mind having a complete set like this, but like I mentioned before, it was going to take more time than I bargained for.

So I chose to forgo the whole mile markers and started concentrating on the intersections.  When routing a mock hiker to camping/ lodging, they're the ones that are really going to matter.  But then I wisened up.  Earlier, I successfully completed the merging of the BTA GIS/ GPS Depository in to 26 single tracks.  Three of which have working total mileages that correspond with what the BTA's Map Team declares as official.

The 65.8 mile Bedford Section (02/2012 map & guide edition) was one of them.  Since I already have a set of digital map & guide points, I just copied it and paste it in the projects folder.  Then I renamed every point to it's stated mileage.  What I did was plot some untitled placemarks in a position on trail that was approximate to my camping, lodging and parking data.

Now, every GPS track has a beginning and an end.  On the Buckeye Trail, they all need to be in the clockwise (CW) direction.  On American Discovery, or North Country, I like to have them face from east to west.  On the Bedford Section, using right click-> properties, a dialogue box comes up.  But I used my mouse and selected the tracks terminating anchor (the little boxes on the line).  Then I deleted it until I got to an untitled placemark.  In the properties dialogue box, I clicked on the "measurements" tab.  Then remembered what it came up with and closed the box.  Afterwards, I right clicked on the untitled placemark and left clicked on "rename."  I then renamed the track with what the measurement tab read, which for me would read like "Mi 26.4" for instance and clicked "OK."

And so you see, that's how you make a digital, or GPS mile marker.

Log 2015111401

Today, I charted the location of the high and low points of the Buckeye Trail's 26 sections.  Afterwards, I started making placemarks of intersections, whole miles and the high and low points on the Road Fork Section only.  The goal is to have them done for the entire circuit so that when I go route my mock thru and 10 miler hikers, I can have an easy mileage reference.  This is a lot of work.  There are times when I easily loose track of what mileage I'm going for.  This happens every time I go to produce a new edition to the Ohio Transit Hiker's Resource (OTHR).  I guess it's just a lot of detail and information.

When going for whole miles, I have to delete a copy of the section's master track from it's terminator with the "Properties" menu up and set to the "Measurements" tab in Google Earth.  The track has little squares that are like anchors.  They pertain to the global coordinates in the track's XML (an Internet programming language) for every place the track turns, no matter how insignificant.  And if I'm not careful when doing as it gets close, the desired mileage might be between these anchors and I could overshoot it.  My Road Fork track has 60 of these markers.  One section down, 25 more to go.

Naming the low and high points could be useful for OTHR's guide.  But I plan on writing a page here on Blogger highlighting them in the future.  Since I've completed the successful merging of the BTA GIS/ GPS Data Depository into 26 sections, I can confirm that nothing on the circuit is higher than 50ft north of the oval in Burton of Geauga County on the west sidewalk of North Cheshire Street.  At 1,332 feet above sea level, I am certain that this is the highest point on the Buckeye Trail as of the date of this log.  Also verified it's elevation with a USGS topo map.