County Fairs Along the ADT

I've been plotting the locations of county fairs on the Eastern and Central Region - North of the American Discovery Trail (ADT).  I can't guarantee they'll result in campsites, but the hikers might like having the information anyways just in case.  Now, as I'm doing these, I'm digging up more regular campsites in the process.  It just so happens that I'm coming across new data.

Many of the county fairs are not easy to locate.  Which gives me the idea that I've had with the Buckeye Trail, only different.  It's kind of technical, but if the up and coming ADT state committees had a GPS repository somehow, they might be able to catalog the location of areas that can't be found on the Internet.  When somebody wants that information, they search and click on their page.  It will have their name and possibly a logo.  The end user will scroll down and download what they want, but they'll have to come through the name and logo to get it.  It could be done for any and all points of interest with within reasonable distance from the trail for an equestrian, or cyclist.  If my numbers are right, that's 32mi corridor with the ADT running right up the center of it.

I never advocate stealth camping.  It's another phrase for "trespassing."  Some the hikers underestimate how quickly a property owner can go from congenial to hostile if this happens enough. Now mid-west distance trails might not be in any condition for it to happen, but they're growing and it's a matter of time.  It's said that the people in town... they talk.  And if that happens enough, there's the Farm Bureau.  Right now, it's a good time to judge the trails for what they could be.

I'm surprised by how much data I've accumulated so far.  I don't think it's going to look like much in the end.  But I'm getting more fatigued.  It's as if each passing day, I begin with less and less energy.

Campgrounds and Overlays for ADT - WV Complete and More

The overlays and campgrounds are done for the American Discovery Trail - West Virginia.  There's one questionable place that I'm unable to get a location for and that is Van Myra Campground in Mineral County.  I'm not sure that I understand what this reservation is, but it seems like it's a picnicking area only now?  A historical document of a farmer in "Dry Run Hollow" depicts that he moved from a property next to it and mentions this area.

I found Dry Run Road in Mineral County, but the structures on the properties didn't match the county's description.  If it is a picnicking area, it might still have a potable water well?  And that still might be of use, pending that the reservation is in range.

"Range" is a term that I use to determine the hiker's patience, or how far they're willing to go off trail to reach an amenity?

I posted on the ADT's Facebook group asking any previous multi-day+ hikers if they've ever had an overnight at an RV park in Kansas or Nebraska?  In Kansas, these types of establishments are the are fairly common, where conventional "campgrounds" are in short supply.

One thing that this project could use are the location of post offices, particularly in the desert areas.  Shipping resupply might be expensive, but those might as well be resupply points and from what I know of Ohio, they can still be in the smallest of towns (even unincorporated ones).  On the Appalachian Trail, a hiker can receive a bounce package, or mail drop on General Delivery/ first class shipping.  But that's because there are thousands, if not millions of them coming through every year.  Those towns have an economy built on them.

Under ordinary circumstances, if somebody doesn't live in that zip code, or have a PO Box, then they can't ship on General Delivery.  It has to be either "Priority Mail Hold for Pickup," or "Express Mail Hold for Pick-up."  On a trail with low numbers, even if somebody from a state committee showed up in every post office and got them to accept general delivery, there's probably not enough hikers annually for them to get use to it.  And I think General Delivery could cause a problem when a package was sent there first class and the post master didn't recognize who it was for that day and shipped it back.

However, there could be a solution to this.  Post Offices have community cork boards.  And if an ADT flier were to posted to one where general delivery was arranged, in some places it might not do much for trail promotion, but it might remind the postmaster even if the trail has low numbers?  And there might be something that we generally don't know about the AT's mail drops and that is what if, with all of their support, could somebody have been donating the annual fees for PO Boxes at all those post offices???  There's could be at least $1200 a year in those?

A couple days ago, I was looking for more BLM property polygons.  I have Utah and Nevada so far and I think California is about all I'm going to get out of it.  That's because I'm not seeing anything for surface parcels east of there.  Seems that everything else pertains to the federal government's subsurface mineral rights.

Mapping Camping - ADT - Nebraska, Kansas & Missouri

As a continuation of yesterday, I'm overlaying state reservation maps I'm Nebraska on the American Discovery Trail's North Midwest Route (NMR), then I'll start coming around on the southern route.

I'm on Nebraska now. And unlike Iowa, they have PDF maps, but they're not the easiest thing to find. You have to expand their camping bar and that's where I'm finding them.

No State Forests Along ADT-IA

There are no state forests along the American Discovery Trail - Iowa.

The ADT turn-by-turns don't always reveal everything.  That's why I'm being as thorough with the camping/ lodging mapping as I can.  There could be a reason for this.  As the guides have been updated, at the time of their initial inception, either the Internet wasn't used, or it's information wasn't that good yet.  A Google search today wasn't as accurate as a Yahoo search in the 90's. Hypothetically, it's possible that nobody's done and "overhaul" of the turn-by-turn's logistics.  But, really... it would take skills that are more like mine to really pull that off.

  For those of you out there, keep reading through the logs here.  I don't want to keep this data to myself.  There is a comment area at the bottom of the page (I censor them btw).  I believe that it's open to the general public???

If you need to reach me on my personal Facebook profile, just know that I'm usually a little single minded about distance trail volunteerism and internal things.  When I'm not, I'm somewhat of a dark person.  We all just might just be better off if I just stick to the trails.

The way to reach me is in the American Discovery Trail's Facebook group.  Recently, I took a friend request from a stranger.  They private messaged me afterwards and were wanting to know how old I was and probably getting information to use in my password security questions.  I blocked them after the second question.  But I started chatting to begin with because I thought it was someone from the ADT?

If you need me on Facebook, be sure to write a PM stating that your an adventurist on the ADT, or a prospective one.

Issues with Overlaying Maps - American Discovery Trail - Illinois (NMR)

I'm trying to overlay maps for the American Discovery Trail - Illinois on the North Midwest Route from remote.  But the Forest Preserve District of Will County isn't making this easy.  They have a great website, but no downloadable maps that I can find.  I need those because PDF usually have a better quality than a screen shot.  Either way, they both have to be cropped and saved as a JPG, then uploaded to the cloud and overlaid in Google Earth.

This project has to move on.  And so it will.

The best thing that I can come up with was putting down placemarks on the parks that Google Earth outlined along the trail.  But that's not going to show me the location of a porta johns or water fountains so somebody can pin placemarks on those in the future.

Camping - American Discovery Trail - Nevada

These are not all camping locations.  The maroon areas are the ranger districts for the Humboldt - Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada.  What many of those icons pertain to are stretches of BLM property along the trail.  That fuchsia outlined area is a polygon that's supposed to be colored solid.  Within those lines is BLM Land.  It stretches way south of this map and it's a one piece polygon.  It's been challenging my computer system all day long.  The problem with BLM is that it's interrupted by private properties.  So what I did with the green tent placemarks there was stated a code, "BLM NV Dis C I/O, or O/I.

With the "I/O's" and "O/I's," the first value is always in the westbound direction.  In electronics, it stands for closed circuit/ open circuit.  To most of us, that's "on" and "off."  This is the way it will appear in a GPS, so what I'm doing is signaling the beginning and end of dispersed camping areas.

But all this data is beta at the moment.  What I haven't done is overlay a topographic map to determine if the areas I stated were even suitable for camping.   I got the fixed campsites plotted for the American Discovery Trail in Utah, Nevada and California today.  In all this work, my Google Earth Pro application crashed 6 times in the process of all this.  Tomorrow, I might go into the operating system's task manager and give Google Earth a high priority on the CPU usage.

I thought about this days ago...  In Google Earth, you have what is known as the "My Places."  It's the left window pane that stores elements that you can activate quickly.  In working with ADT's mapping, it's taken on a lot of information since January.  And mine is slowing Google Earth's startup down.   What I think I'm going to have to do is clean up the My Places and work with by storing things on my hard drive more.  I'll need to bring somethings up only as I needed.  Hopefully, that will save on system resources in the process.

I just rebuilt my computer 4 months ago.  The motherboard is new, the CPU is a mid-grade I5 Intel, it has 16GB of RAM and I'm working with a four hard disk setup on a manual RAID.  I'm not sure what the display card is, but I know it's good enough to support 3 monitors instead of two.  I'm not sure if going to a 4.0GHz I7 processor would be enough?

It was tough finding the right BLM shapes.  I've never had to do business with them before.  I almost gave up.  But I finally prevailed when I picked up surface parcel data on the "BLM NV Surface Management Agency (SMA)" from the BLM Navigator.  It's just like the property parcels that I worked with along the trail in Utah.  You're going to get the entire state.  And when you do, you need to go along the trail's track and deactivate the BLM property shapes.  When you get to the end of the trail, in the left window pane, start deleting what you don't need.

Now there's hundreds, if not thousands of them.  And while Shift + Deleting, things are going to go fast.  Your parcels could be anywhere, so make sure that you don't get too "delete happy" or you'll delete right over it.  You don't want to let it get you too mesmerized and that's easy to do with all those layers.

ADT Adventure Planning - Mapping Tip 05/06/2017

If you don't know a lot about GPS mapping, your not alone.  But I'm here to help you.  First, lets start

by downloading Google Earth Pro.  It's free these days.

You should start with the roads.  You can construct them using Google My Maps.  Unlike regular Google Maps, this will allow you to save your work to your Google Account and export it to a KML file to open in Google Earth.  It has limitations, such as the track can only be moved about 10 times.  And each map can only have about 10 layers, or segments in it.  There's simple work arounds to these.  If you run out of reroutes, just use a shorter segment.  And if you run out of layers, just create another map.

Some of the trails are named in the various turn-by-turn guides.  You'll need a membership to AllTrails.  This is where adventurists like yourself have recorded the trail on their own GPS's and uploaded the file for others to use.  Not all of the trails that are on the ADT are on there.  And the source may not be accurate.  The reason being is there's no telling what device recorded it, how often it anchored the track, or how good the weather was that day?

When the trail is concurrent with another distance trail, you can download their track data and open it in Google Earth for you to use.

If a named, or unnamed trail that the ADT is on that you can't find on AllTrails and occurs within a national forest, you might find it's path using a USGS Topo overlay in Google Earth.  It's route should be written on the map.  Using the "path" feature, you can trace a track over it.  The source should not be trusted as being accurate.  But down trail, sometimes you have to follow the trail and not the GPS.  When your there, just verify by sight that it's impossible for another trail to be on that course and the one your on is probably right.  Make sure that you continue to run in and out of it, or it's staying parallel.

Using the USDA Forest Service FSGeodata Clearinghouse's Data Extract Tool, 

you'll see that I selected that square icon with the circle and the blue in it.  At the bottom of #1, I choose a forest.  Then in #2, "I checked National Forest System Trails."  In #3, I selected the "Shapefile - SHP - .shp" file format option.  This resource might have some of the trails that you're looking for?

Also, "National Forest Service Roads" might work.  The ADT does take place on some of them.

Your GPS software might not read shapefiles.  You might have to convert to KML.  Since these are just tracks, I'd use something like my Geodata Converter.

If your using a smartphone, or do know, or trust your hand GPS's stock software, somewhere in your manual should be the location of the folder that it reads data from.  I do it this way myself.  But it requires a conversion to the GPX format.  You can convert KML to GPX with GPSVisualizer's "Convert a File" feature.  Select your output format as "GPX," then your file and click on "Convert."  When the next page opens up, right click on the link, left click "save," or "save linked content as" give it a name and save it to your hard drive.

Maps Up to Date

I just compared the new updated maps that I purchased from the Buckeye Trail Association to my tracks and points on my Google Earth records.  Everything is up to date and "ship shape" to begin the next phase of my mapping project.  I'm going to start by laying down placemarks on the off-road terminators, then use trace a tracks over the existing ones.  I'm hoping to do about 4 sections a day with the pen tablet.

Governmental Reservation Overlays - 03/17/2017 - 01

I just overlaid 6 counties worth of metropark's maps today.  The Buckeye Trail in Northeast Ohio is done.  As for the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath and the Zoar Valley Trails, I'm going to hold off until later.  With the OECTT, I'm just going to dump whatever I already have into it.  And the Zoar Valley is only going to be a track.

But as for today, my brain is done.

Governmental Reservation Overlays - 03/16/2017

I got reservation and park maps overlaid for the Buckeye Trail in the Lake Metroparks and Geauga Park District overlaid in Google Earth today.  I almost missed Orchard Hills Park along the Bedford Section.  That section clips has a 2 - 1/2 mile "clip" through northwest corner of Chester Township in Geauga County.  I was having a problem with Google Earth's image rotation locking after 90°.  But I found that if I went into the overlay properties-> location, that I could rotate adjust the rotation with a numerical degree value in a field.

I've always been very active in the Buckeye Trail's Facebook group.  And I'm having a hard time not telling them what I'm up to.  All I can say about it for now is that it's for the annual TrailFest in Yellow Springs of Greene County.  It's probably about time that I presented GPS material there.

Log 2017011601

Today's tip regards the amateur GPS mapping of the American Discovery Trail (ADT).  When creating a GPS line for the ADT in Google My Maps, it easier to do if you import a state's GPX data. Then creating walking directions, if it's urban/ suburban, only route that track for about 40 ADT miles (require more corrections in less distance). The rural's could go as high 90. In either case, the walking, or cycling directions in My Maps start off as Point A to Point B. But you can add directions up to "J" (and you probably should). After that, you can reroute the track about 15 additional times.

Log 2017011601

I have the GPS tracks for the American Discovery Trail (ADT) - Illinois on the North Mid-West Route (NMR).

For a running list, I currently have ADT tracks for:

Delaware
Maryland (incld. DC)
West Virginia
Ohio
Ohio NMR & SMR
Indiana NMR & SMR
Illinois NMR & SMR
Missouri SMR
Kansas SMR
Colorado NMR & SMR (but not west of Denver yet)


- The largest city on the ADT is San Francisco, California at (population).

Log 2017011401

- I have the GPS tracks, or a line for the American Discovery Trail in Missouri on the South Mid-West Route.  So far, it's the main routes only.

Log 2017011401

I now have enough navigational aids to route across that entire trail.  The campgrounds and lodging are plotted in placemarks in Google Earth for Illinois on the South Mid-West Route.  And I could have swore that I purchased Colorado's turn by turn guide and data before, but I can't find it.  I know that I once had it because the western part of the state

I can't get the standalone application "shp2kml" to work.  When I rolled my computer's clock back to 1/1/2011, it shut down my Internet access.  And it kept giving me a bogus error every time I tried to convert to KML.  I've been trying all night to covert the shapefiles of 9 more national forests along the American Discovery Trail.  So, I purchased a license for "Shape2Earth" for $39.99.  It could take them a couple hours to process my purchase, so I'll catch up with my email for a serial number this afternoon sometime.

When I get all those forests converted, I'll upload the entire pack so that prospective adventurists online can download and open them in Google Earth at home.  I'll also link them in a post on the American Discovery Trail's Facebook Group.  If the forest allows dispersed camping, it must take place on lands that the federal government actually owns.

Log 2017010501

The American Discovery Trail (ADT) - West Virginia is routed through the Cheat/ Potomac Ranger District of the Monongahela National Forest.  Another NFS webpage lists Cheat and Potomac as having two different ranger districts.

I've been working with Google Earth and my ADT - WV GPS track.  In the westbound direction for generally 10 mile per day hikers, beginning in Maryland at Segment 4 - Mi 164.67, there is an amenity gap for 66.82 total miles into West Virginia.

Assuming that the thru hike rate in this part of West Virginia is 15 miles per day, with amenity spurs no longer than 3mi, I work with a 3mi reserve, total daily output not to exceed 18.0 total miles, then I am aware of an amenity gap at this rate in the Keyser, WV area.  But I'll be going off the bed soon and I might not get back to this project for weeks.  That's unless somebody needs logistical assistance, then maybe sooner.

Log 2017010301

A prospective hiker on Facebook requested assistance with logistical planning on the American Discovery Trail.  They needed my help and I wasn't doing anything too important, so I dropped what I was doing to accrue data that I was going to do at a future date.  In was in reference to sleeping amenities on the eastern seaboard and determining if the route could support roughly 10 mile days.  It's something that I've already with the Ohio Transit Hiker's Resource.

Anyways, my dual monitors worked well with ADT's guide in the document one and Google Earth in the other.  My document monitor is like reading a 19in page... I hardly have to scroll. For those that are unfamiliar with this, my setup uses one keyboard and mouse.  When I want an application on the other monitor, I just drag it over.  And since the document monitor is to the left, all I have to do is more the mouse left and the pointer shows up there.  DISCLAIMER: most of you don't need the computer setup that I have :-)).

Today, was also the first time that I worked with my re-programmable keypad.  I was using one key to make placemarks that ordinarily take take take 3 key strokes.  I only have 6 of it's keys programmed for Google Earth.  Some if that applications functions doesn't have any keystrokes and I wish they did.

Log 2016121501

If your a hiker and you come from another distance trail agency, what you should know is that they're all different non-profit (perhaps not for profits, too) corporations. Usually, they've been up and running for decades. And despite some of their connections to the Appalachian Trail, they've been mostly evolving on their own. Even the conditions on the ground can dictate how this is.

On the Buckeye Trail, some of you can expect there to be less navigational aides available. Also, a "section" is a defined unit and the Buckeye Trail Association's 26 map & guide combination documents are split and labeled by them.  They also define the jurisdiction of their section supervisors and trail adopters.

On the map & guides, the latter portion might be a bit brief compared to what your use to. But Buckeye's trail alerts and map updates change frequently and those webpages must be consulted before every adventure. The good news is that these alerts and updates are a very active program and are generally well kept.

The North Country Trail Association is missing a several maps in its online store. For starters, since North Country is a National Scenic Trail, some of the reasons for this are political. And in the case of NW Ohio, I don't know what it's story is?

Now their GIS does a little better. It has NW Ohio.  And their maps are 2003 edition the last time I checked. I know of  three changes in Pennsylvania and Ohio since then.

American Discovery Trail doesn't have maps. It uses waypoints and a turn-by-turn guide. I'm working on drawing an amatur GPS track based on them. Unfortunately, I can't data generated by other users for some reservations because they're not publicly available for download somewhere else.  And since I don't have it done, I don't know what GPS gaps I have?  But I have nearly complete tracks for Delaware through Indiana, minus the Dolly Sods in West Virginia now.

Log 2016112902

All of the GIS and GPS tracks for the North Country Trail in Michigan have been numbered in order in the westbound direction.  The next step is to change the color of every other one so I can determine what direction they're in and make sure that the beginnings and terminators barely overlap.

Log 2016112901

Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore Chapter of the North Country Trail Association accounts for 134 of the GIS Repository.  I haven't yet tried to overtake smaller tracks with anything stock yet. So far, at the moment, that's a lot and there's not enough of anything on Google Maps or Earth to overtake it with, either.

Log 2016112202

My tracks for Central New York Chapter of the North Country Trail Association is going to be easy to merge and I have it high and low elevations anyways.  So, I moved ahead and got the NCT GIS Repository tracks for Pennsylvania organized by chapter.  Then I started working on the Allegheny National Forest.  I went out on a limb and tried to merge it's 95 miles at once, but the GPX file came back with errors.

I always work in the westbound direction, so I started numbering it's tracks 00 - 54 at that point.  I had changed GPSVisualizer's settings so that it would convert to GPX and not merge.  This time, the reordered tracks showed the correct mileage on the output.  But when I went to merge, there were still errors.

Like I mentioned, it's on a limb.  The proper proceedure at that point is to determine what direction the tracks are heading in and edit their names with Eb or Wb.  Once I get done with that, I'll choose whether its easier to merge eastbound or westbound, put one in a folder and save to the hard drive.  The use GPSVisualizer's "reverse tracks" feature for GPX output to get them all facing the same direction.

Afterwards, I'll import them to Google Earth and replace the tracks that are in the wrong direction, save that file and run the GPX conversion set to "connect all segments" and "merge tracks."  Usually that does it.  But if it still gets errors, I'll need to go back over the raw track segments again to confirm that they're in the correct direction.

If they aren't, then I'll have to reverse the affected segment and repeat the process.  But if they're right, then that means that there is a bad track somewhere.  The fix to this is to overtake and trace the track by hand, extending the terminators of one of it's neighbors... then delete the bad track.  Once that's done, go back through the GPSVisualizer GPX merging process.