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.

Michigan DNR, Pennsylvania DCNR and Vermont ANR Plotted

Michigan DNR parcel GIS data is taxing my computer to it's limits.  I have to set my CPU's to "high priority" for Google Earth Pro and it barely runs it.  I can't find any shapes of for DNR's reservations.  Instead, I'm using the parcels, which has a lot more entries.  I'd like to color code them for the camping that's available, but with how I'm throwing everything my computer's go into it and it's running really slow, I don't think that it's worth it.

Google Earth displays the state forest reservation lines, but doesn't have an icon in them telling me what it is.  I started the DIS C I's and O's (dispersed camp, on and off), but it's a shot in the dark if I got them right.  They will probably have to do?

The state polygons (shapes) for Pennsylvania commonwealth reservations are in.  It's state forests are few, but dispersed camping is permitted and they're all colored green.  I just finished up Vermont's state reservations.  That's it.  The ground work is laid for camping.  The next thing I'll be doing is lodging and I should probably be done with that quickly?

And of course all this is a continuation of my North Country Trail mapping project.

Log 2016112601

I finished merging the GPS track for the North Country Trail - Pennsylvania.  In the short run, it's results are located on it's Facebook group.  Where the content of this group is more "static" and hits on various search engines, their Facebook group is closed to members only (you might become one).  I'm going to support the group.  In the meantime, I still have three states that need merging.  I've already reported on the statewide highs and lows for Ohio and North Dakota.  But the current format is that I also do it for every chapter, partner and affiliate.  I haven't done those with those states yet.  So, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota need the real work.  I plan to split Michigan between the LP and UP.  Otherwise, it's about 1,000 miles of tracks to deal with as one state.

But I think I'm going to get on to other things in the time being.  My motorhome needs a new high pressure, in-line fuel pump installed soon.  After my final data is digested by North Country's Facebook group, I'll probably add my final data for the trail entirely here on Blogger.

Log 2016052701

I was at a bar and hotel in Corydon, Pennsylvania in 2011, just across the line from New York State.  And the locals were telling me a suspicion that they had about PA DNR having released some rattlesnakes on Tracy Ridge somewhere south of there just off of the North Country National Scenic Trail  I dismissed it at first, but as I hiked through there, the one thing that I noticed was that the place seemed overrun by chipmunks.  And the NCT has areas of thick, high vegetation that hugs the path (I couldn't see through it).  Sometimes, there would be something that had to be at least 20lbs that would just take off under there about 6ft to the east of the trail.  I couldn't discern any footfalls, so I think that it had to move along the ground.  North of Kellettville, I caught the "cucumber" smell several times out there.

I came through the Tracy Ridge area during a holiday weekend and there were more than a dozen people on trail.  About a day after, there was no one and no cell signal.  I went into isolation symptoms at 2.5 days where I really learned about the darkest side of myself.  It was growing to no end.  I pulled an aggressive 24 miler, running the downhills and flats on the last leg because I wanted to "get the hell out of there."

That trip ended with me loosing my wallet.  And lucky for me, my family lived about 100 miles away and my brother came and got me.  Now I know to store my money and ID cards in two different places.  Because my bank can wire my money, but I can't pick it up without an ID.

What I did was purchased some low grade canvas, Velcro, a hot glue gun and sticks for it from Jo Ann Fabrics.  And I used a card to form it while I hot glued around 3 sides.  On the final side, I hot glued the Velcro in place and that made a little slot to store them in.  It lasted for years.