Image Trace

What I am attempting to do is trace an image and cut it into panels to upload to Cricut to make a shirt.  Specifically, an outline of the State of OH.  I located a transparent png image in Google.  I copied that image into AI.  I used the pen tool to manually trace the image.  Worked great.  And the reason I chose to trace the image is because the Google image could not be edited at all.  Then I tried to use the line tool to place a line down the traced image to 'cut' it into 3 panels.  The line tool was greyed out.  Why? is my question.  I watched a tutorial on how to slice and divide shapes with pathfinder.  However because the line tool was greyed out I couldn't.  I have watched several tutorials on how to upload an image into AI and zip zip, edit it, trace it, etc.  I try to do it and its nothing like that in real AI life.  I also noticed the image uploaded to AI from Google was a linked file.  But all images I find show they are a linked file.  Is that the issue?  Why is what I thought to be a very simple task turned into hours upon hours of frustration.  Along with AI freezing up and 'not responding' then shutting down.  Any help is much appreciated.