November has seen a lot of progress on this project. We broke ground on the 12th and since then about 30 trees were removed, the area for parking was lightly graded and smoothed, geotextile cloth was put down, crusher run was spread and compacted, and finally several loads of 3/4″ to 1″ stones were spread and rolled. Forty four feet of reinforced concrete culvert was installed at the road and then covered with crusher run. We have placed about 10 logs on the edge of the trail side of the area as temporary wheel stops. It appears the lot should accommodate about 16 cars. No trailers of any kind will be allowed in this area since its relatively small size precluded us from putting in the kind of loop needed for trailers. We’ll be putting a sign up at the entrance to inform parking area users. We plan to open the area for use about December 15th. Finally, we also put in a short stone path starting at the north end of the parking area to connect the parking area to the ATT.
As you can see from the image above, the lot has a double wide driveway (28′ wide to allow safe simultaneous entry and exit) and wide approaches on both sides of the driveway. The asphalt for the driveway was put down in three layers with compacting after each layer. Needless to say this driveway was built to last.
Trenching for the water line to connect to a drinking fountain has been completed. The Town of Cary may partner with us on a portion of the fees charged for tapping in to their water line. This has delayed the installation of the meter a few weeks but we hope to get this done before the holidays. As we reported earlier, a grant from REI is paying for a substantial portion of the drinking fountain project. We just received the fountain and will be installing it on a concrete pad we plan to build just off the trail by the connector path. The major funding for our development of the parking area came from proceeds we received from the Tobacco Road Marathon in 2011 and 2012. We also received funding from the ATT 10 Miler in 2010 and 2011 and from the Tarwheels Bicycling Club in 2012.
Parking Area at Pittard Sears Road Nearing Completion
