At the moment the web page was loaded, my script calculated where Beka might be by making a few assumptions about the number of hours she would hike each day and the time she would set out, as well as her average daily speed. A purple ring indicated her position on the trail.

To center the indicator over the map, I first pieced together a scanned copy of the National Park Service map and digitized the trail as a series of dots. With the trail defined as a piecewise linear function, I could easily find any point along the trail just by knowing how many miles it was from either end. With Beka's help, I built a table of the stops she planned to make and their approximate distance from the trailhead in Baxter State Park.

As she progressed along the trail, the towns she passed through were shown with a variety of icons. A flag indicated she'd already passed a town, but for towns she hadn't reached, there were three possibilities. If there were a post office in town, a brown package indicated that we would send supplies to her there. This also meant visitors could use the "Trail Mail" form on the page to enter a message for us to print and bundle into the package. Once the package was sent, the package icon was replaced with a mailbox to show that any further Trail Mail would reach her at the next town. Towns without mail service were symbolized by a comfortable bed, though a better icon might have been a pint of store-bought ice cream!

The dates she planned to reach each stop started to change as she progressed, so I revised the page to predict the approximate date she would arrive in each town based on her average daily speed.

I was soon asked by friends and family to show them where and when to send their own baked goods and holiday cards. I added an address field to the table of stops, and turned the stop labels into links that would create a mock-up of a properly addressed envelope.