NCT Wb Mock Hiker About 80% Complete

- I finished routing my mock hiker written simulation of the North Country Trail from it's new eastern terminus at the Appalachian Trail to Mile 21.7 of the Kekebabic Trail Club in Minnesota.  The last time that I tallied up where I was with this was for Mellon, Wisconsin and that was over 3,300 miles of about 4,806.  Considering that I just got through the Superior Hiking Trail tonight, I could probably have the westbound mock hiker done tomorrow?

- I've decided that I'm only going to route the eastbound mock hiker to Stockport Section, current day Point 7/ Whipple Section, current day Point 24 - Buckeye/ North Country Trail in SE Ohio. 

- At a rate of 24 and 18 miles per day depending on the terrain and taking a zero day once every 21 days generally, I've determined that a thru hike of the North Country Trail is impossible to complete within a 210 day window.  By my independent review of the trail, North Country's length exceeds that window of execution by about 1,500 miles.  I did hear that this may be the case, but I wanted to test it myself.  Regardless, I'm familiarizing myself with the trail in hopes that I can one day anticipate North Country hiker's arrivals in SE Ohio.  I won't know this until I complete this project, but roughly, off the top of my head, it may be possible for those hikers to start at either terminus and end on Road Fork or Whipple Sections - BT/ NCT?

- What I think North Country needs is a 10 miler study.  But after this project, I'm on to doing some GIS research for American Discovery trail.

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 Waypoints - Michigan and Wisconsin on North Country Trail

I finished the dispersed camping waypoints for Michigan and Wisconsin.  I went on to try North Dakota, but my Google Earth crashed when I accidentally tried to paste a KML element into a text field.  That's the #1 way that I crash this application.  It happens when I accidentally click on a colored polygon, or a shape for a government reservation.  In this case, these are colored "green" for when dispersed, or backcountry camping is permitted.  As I've mentioned in previous articles, I'm putting the "I's" and "O's" in to signal "on" and "off" for more rudimentary GPS's.

I have not been keeping track of my hours.  This project ultimately benefits Adventurer's Project.  When it's all said and done, if I had to guess, I'd say that there would be 200 hours put into it? The plan is to release all of it's data on Adventurer's Project's website.  I still have North Dakota and Minnesota to do.  I'm going to leave that for tomorrow.  Today, I just got a reminder to make a payment on my Buckeye Trail Association Life Membership.  I got it in October, so I guess I should get rid of that?