Introduction

This log entry was written down trail sometime in June of 2013. I forgot about it and it remained in my "drafts" folder until today, which is the date that this log was published.
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It must have been June 3rd that I left my hometown of Painesville, Ohio.  I have a 2008 Chevy HHR that I built a 48" wide pop out to fit a 6" thick memory foam mattress. I used some 3/8" ply wood to build three walls that fold and separate in the center for transport.  The floor is a 96" long piece of 3/4 ply, where 32" at the foot separates... also for transport.  When erect, I cover it with a heavy duty tarp where I've folded the corners and then secured it with bungee cords to my roof rack and holes in my tire rims (I haven't been using hub caps)  Sometimes, it's the Chevy HHRv, but I prefer to call it "The Cramper."

During use, The Cramper was tested by tornadic winds at Wolf Run State Park, and multiple rain storms where it didn't leak at all.  With the tailgate being open, I've had to manually disable the interior lights by turning the hatch mechanism to the lock position by hand.  For about two days, the lock failed to return to the unlock position, so when I was driving to town, I had the door bungeed down.  Somewhere in a couple days of driving, it just corrected itself somehow and started working again.  Which, I'm very pleased about because I was not looking forward to peeling off the interior tailgate plastic to diagnose it's malfunctioning lock.

I am a hiker/ maintainer/ cyclist.  The Buckeye Trail (North Country and American Discovery Trails concurrent in part) is a 1,444mi circuit within the four corners of Ohio.  At present, the official count is 54% off-road and 46% on.  Of that 54, Buckeye actually owns less than 2% of that.  The rest is in local, county, state and national parks and forests.  Sometimes Buckeye's volunteers perform the maintenance, while in some instances they're forbidden to work on it unless the park manager requests it.  Where Buckeye does have maintenance, they're often short on maintainers in a few places.  That's why I was driving around with a 4' x 8' utility trailer full of tools and gear.  There's always something unique about every trail segment that I've ever worked on.

There are very few volunteers who go around the state as visiting maintainers like I do.  Most of them work in a group, and there's probably only a dozen of us in the state.  Off-road trail is harder and more time consuming per mile than the on-road.  A good size off-road adoption is about 3mi, but the entire length requires maintenance several times a year.  My 16.9 mile on-road segment only requires that it be reblazed once every 3 years.  For a person working a full time job that's also married with children, I'd recommend adopting an on-road segment that's no more than 20 miles long, given that cut brush for the entire length, but only reblaze 1/3rd of it every year.

Log 2013072001

Trail guides and GPS waypoints were procured for Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana on the American Discovery Trail.  As I'm MD Edmonds a.k.a "Treeman," "Treeman of the North," "Matthew Dexter Edmonds" and the author of the Ohio Transit Hiker's Resource, I realized that my data which was supposed to include the American Discovery, omitted the "north loop."

The American Discovery is a 6,800mi multi-purpose trail, or route that spans from the Atlantic in Delaware to the Pacific in San Francisco.  It is attached to the Sea-to-Sea Route when it is concurrent with the Buckeye Trail/ North Country Trail Connector in southern Ohio from Village of Chesterhill of Morgan County to City of Milford of Clermont County, about 12 miles northeast of Cincinnati. 

Since about 1,000 miles of North Country Trail is concurrent with the Buckeye, I also have the goal get my patch, or to "get patched" (as I call it) in Ohio.  At the moment, I have the Ohio/ Pennsylvania line to the Village of Zoar on NCT's independant east arm.  Then from the City of Napoleon of Henry County to the intersection of the Evergreen and Wabash Cannonball Trail - North Fork in Spencer Township of Lucas County.

As concurrent with Buckeye, I still have between the threeway intersections for Road Fork and Whipple Sections on the Belle Valley Section.  I tried to conquer this on my last 32 day trip.  Despite lightning outside of the Village of Belle Valley in Noble County, I rode my bicycle to my starting point outside of the unincorporated area of Reinersville in Manchester Township of Morgan County.

I still have half of the Whipple Loop from Road Fork Section, Pt. 21 to a little west of Whipple Section, Pt. 2 where I began a previous hike at Archer's Fork Road/ Co Rd 14.  And then from the 3 way BT Whipple/ Stockport Section intersection in the American Electric Power ReCreation Lands in Reinersville in Manchester Township of Morgan County across southern Ohio to US-68 just south of the Village of Mount Orab in Brown County.

Other than the southern tier of the Buckeye Trail circuit, I did about 12mi of the mainline American Discovery Trail as it was concurrent with the Loveland Section - Buckeye Trail from the southern terminus (near the Eden Park conservatory) to the three way Loveland/ Williamsburg intersection in the City of Milford.  To complete the independant arms of the ADT, I estimate that it will take me 4 days on bicycle.  As for the last remaining segment of the North Country Trail, that will take me one day hiking.  That which remains on the BT's southern tier... estimated at 2 - 3 weeks.  The amount of mileage already covered on the BT in the last 3 years: about 1,070mi.  I think at this rate that the four arms are so short that I might as well.