North Country Trail
The North Country National Scenic Trail, more commonly called the North Country Trail or "NCT" is a real location.
The trail stretches approximately 4,600 miles (7,400 km) from Crown Point in eastern New York to Lake Sakakawea State Park in central North Dakota in the United States.
It passes through:
- the seven states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
- Ten National Forest areas
- Two National Wildlife Refuges
- 47 state forests,
- 22 state game areas,
- 57 state parks and state historic areas,
- at least ten county forests and parks.
The wikipedia page for the NCT is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Country_Trail.
In the Spearfish Lake Tales universe the NCT appears in Busted Axle Road, Homestanders, Icewater and the Alien, Runners Moon, and Birdwatcher Hill Fire.
The trail passes through Mark and Jackie Gravengood's property:
Mark and Jackie’s farm occupied a critical half mile separating two sections of state forest land. Not only had Vince walked away with permission for the trail to cross Mark and Jackie’s property, he’d gotten their agreement to build and maintain a seven-mile segment of it.BAR4
Mark had remembered Vince as a purist. He didn’t even like to use chain saws if he didn’t have to, so he’d waited until Vince’s back was turned before he took the tractor and mower out to the trail. In fact, over the years, Mark and the tractor had built about twenty-two miles of trail, but he let others do most of the maintenance. There’d been several bridges to build, but as a phone man, Mark not only had access to telephone poles but the equipment to handle them, so that hadn’t proved to be a problem. Nowadays, about all he had to do with the trail was run the tractor and mower along several miles of it two or three times a summer.BAR4
The trail goes over Turtle Hill and some guy drove a farm tractor and brush hog up it every now and then to keep it open enough for dogsled racing. Jack Erikson drove his Jeep up the trail to Turtle Hill so Vixen Hvalchek could get a cell phone signal to report a fire to the east.BHF1 Jack later led a couple of pickups up the trail to move the fire command post.BHF22
