Newman Blog

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Took a short hike with my son on a stretch of the Conestoga Trail System that travels through Lancaster County Central Park. Round-tripped 4 miles (2 out and then back) from the East King Street entrance to Golf Road.

Friday night saw a severe thunder storm pass through the park and caused a significant amount of blow down damage to trees in the northeast section of the park, as seen in this photo. A few of the trees with blazes were knocked over completely.

Overall, a A pleasant stretch of trail with some nice views and a few moderately difficult hills. The park’s trail map seems pretty accurate. It turns out there are actually 10 hiking trails in the park, as described in the trail guide.

I finally manged to get back out on the trail after a four month hiatus. Who knew that summer would be so hectic?

Last Friday was a blistering, humid day for a hike that was mostly on asphalt roadways bounded by tall corn, but I banged out 9 miles. That completed Section A for me and put a good start on Section B.

With a full section of the trail under my belt I turned to ArcMap and, with the help of the DS Mapbook extension, published my first-ever map book!

The 10 page map book  shows Section A at 1″ = 1/4 Mile scale. View or download it now!  Check it out and let me know what you think. As the title of this post indicates, this is my first attempt and I’ll be working to clean up the page layout and map elements in the near future.

Updated trail map for the Conestoga Trail System:

PDF Version: 070420-cts_vector_map.pdf

Google Earth Format: ConestogaTrailSystem070420.kml

New Pics!
Images from my third day on the trai, part of my project to update the trail maps for the Conestoga Trail System. It was a gorgeous day: mid 60s and cloudless blue skies. Winds in the 5 – 12 mph range. I got in about 8 miles and then had my wife and kids pick me up for the return trip to the truck. That sure is a better way to do things instead of backtracking. Click on the pic to the left for the Gallery.

Trail Report:
The trail seems to be in fair condition, but is soggy in a lot of places. That’s to be expected along a creek bed in early Spring–we have had a bunch of rain in the past 2 weeks. Look out for electric fences! In this stretch there are several of them that you have to cross under/over as you make your way through the fields. Also, cows and horses leave behind some big piles of stuff, so tread carefully. Read the rest of this entry »

From: LancasterOnline.com: Community Websites – Lancaster Hiking Club

CONESTOGA TRAIL NORTH END REOPENS

With logging completed, we can again return to our usual route between Brubaker Valley Rd and Long Lane near the north end of the CTS. So welcome back hikers and trail care workers.

…and furthermore…

LOGGING ENDS.

WE ARE HIKING BY SPEEDWELL LAKE AGAIN BETWEEN LONG LANE AND BRUBAKER VALLEY ROAD NEAR THE NORTH END OF THE CONESTOGA TRAIL, LANCASTER COUNTY PA. HOORAY!

I found an extension to ArcMap 9.2 today that allows you to export a feature class directly to Google Earth .kml file. It’s called ‘Export to KML Extension Version 2.3‘ and is published in the public domain by Kevin Martin of the Portland, OR GIS office. So, of course I had to test it out and post the results here. To make use of the trail map file you must first have installed Google Earth. Right-click on the link below and save the target to your hard drive and then double-click it to open the file in Google Earth.

Conestoga Trail System A0.00 – A 6.66

Anyone interested in following my project process might be interested in some of the stuff I’m using along the way. If nothing else, it will be interesting, to me at least, to look back on this list at the end of the project to see what worked and what did not. This is the kind of post only a geek could love. Read the rest of this entry »