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Columbus Day 2015 morning

Good Morning! As I now have cellphone service, here is a brief update from Sunday. More updates latef.

As soon as I got into Maryland then West Virgina I lost cellphone service. I am surprised, as except for the Adirondacks and a few valleys in Western NY or the Catskills, I usually have good cell service. The same thing is true with the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania, and heck I had good service most of the way down through Pennsylvania on US 219 until I entered Maryland. Then there was no service in Maryland and West Virgina, anywhere I went along US 219 and down through WV Route 32. This is why I haven’t posted a update since yesterday morning.

Saturday night was a pleasant night up on Loleta Grade Road at the Allegheny National Forest. I had previously camped on Loleta Grade Road, but never took the part of Loleta Grade beyond where it leaves the East Branch of the Millstone Creek. Loleta Grade Road (FR 133) gets a lot narrower and somewhat narrower past the Millstone Creek and passes several marshlands and has a handful of campsites on it. It turns out the portion of Loleta Grade Road by East Millstone Creek is closed for reconstruction. They have a done such a nice job at building and improving roadside campsites throughout the Allegheny National Forest, while adding earthen barriers or rock barriers to protect forest resources from people driving past the campsites. Each campsite has a natural stone fire ring and many of them hardened with gravel. Loleta Grade was pretty with the fall colors. I took several pictures and will be uploading them as Internet or cellphone data service becomes available. The sun didn’t rise above the horizon of the forest until well after 8 AM this morning, although first light came a little before 7 AM. The campsite I was at was Forest Road 777, which I knew was a sign of good luck for the day.

Drove Along PA 3002 along the Clarion River to Ridgeway. That’s another part of the Allegheny National Forest I had never explored before. The Clarion River was pretty with the leaves turning, and looks like a lot of fun to paddle at least downstream. It has a good current but is deep and flat enough that it’s not white water by any means. I stopped along one of the State Game Lands where a creek – which I don’t know the name of – cross through a hollow in peak colors. It was beautiful. Eventually I made it to Ridgeway, and much like you would expect from that town, the approach into the city was a steep drive down. Ridgeway stunk of the hydrogen sulfide from paper manufacturing.

Then it was down US 219 all the way down to West Virigina. It’s a beautiful drive, but oh my gosh, does US 219 wind and have some steep descents and climbs. It also hits a lot of hick towns – some quite pretty and others dying coal mining towns – that are mostly sustained these days by government services and healthcare. Some nice farm lands and great sweeping vistas along the way, but not a lot of places to pull over and take pictures. To make matters worst I drank a lot of coffee this morning, and after a piss break at McDonalds bought more coffee and spent have the afternoon looking for places to take piss breaks. US 219 certainly winds a lot. The locals were blowing past me whenever they could pass me or whenever I would pull over. I don’t consider myself to be a slow driver, but with those narrow lanes and windy roads, I certainly had to hold back my speed a bit especially with my big lifted truck.

US 219 becomes an expressway after Clariton and the first ten miles of it is spectacularly beautiful. It reminds me a lot of the Taconic Parkway, only more modern and wider but with many of the same sweeping views of farm country and color packed hills. Some of the steepest hills I’ve ever driven on an expressway. Eventually the terrain becomes more rolling, with some larger farms. I ended up getting off a few different exits looking for a place to piss, and then got back on not finding one. I didn’t stop for a badly needed piss break until I reached a fast-food place just over the line in Maryland, where US 219 joins I-69 for a brief concurrency. The clerk at Burger King in Maryland there had a strong Southern Accent, but strangely enough when I got into West Virgina, the clerk at the gas station sounded modestly Appalachian but without much of a noticeable accent – even less then the Midwestern/Appalachian accent what I heard in Northern Pennsylvania. Being that I was in a hurry to get to West Virgina to figure out where I would camp and realizing that the Flight 92 memorial was 9 miles from US 219, I decided against visiting the memorial. It’s possible it was closed on Sunday. I got off US 219 at this one exit and drove through this large, old coal mining town with narrow roads and houses on the edge of a cliff, facing a mountain whose top had been blown off years ago to produce bituminous coal. At the bottom of the mountain was a vast tank that was being used to collect and treat acid mining discharge. Kind of sad to be driving past a place that time in many ways had left behind with nothing but a toxic legacy. Pennsylvania has a lot of old, small towns that were heavily built up during the industrializing era of America but seem to have little purpose today besides cheap housing and traditional communities.

South of the Pennsylvania Turnpike US 219 suddenly becomes a two lane road. You have to exit the expressway and then drive on another pokey local part of US 219 then you get diverted on a completed section of US 219. It’s obvious from the construction that Pennsylvania plans to continue the US 219 expressway all the way to Maryland border – a project that is requiring the blasting away of whole mountains and building massive bridges through the steep terrain of the Laurel Highlands. After driving a few miles on the congested highway, you get back on the expressway for a few miles before it drops back down two lanes, and your in Maryland.

It’s pretty wild driving I-69 in Maryland with it’s steep hills and the 70 MPH speed limit. At times I was pushing Big Red almost to the floor climbing over the mountains at the speed. I-69 is very twisty and steep. By interstate standards it seems to be sub-prime in design, but that may have to do more with the steep Appalachian terrain then the engineering that had to blast a 70 MPH expressway through. Heading west on I-69 traffic was fairly light. Stopped at a nice overlook on US 219 just after getting off of I-69.

I don’t have much good to say about Garnet County, Maryland or the state of Maryland more generally. US 219 crosses more of Western Maryland then most other roads, cutting through the widest portion of Maryland between Pennsylvania and West Virgina. A lot of farms in this part of the state, perched up on hills. Evidence of coal mining was all over, and honestly the terrain didn’t differ that much from the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania. Farther south of I-69, past a town named Accident, the terrain became more rolling and you could see to the east the Blue Ridge Mountains. A lot of wind turbines on the mountains. Unlike Pennsylvania, no burn barrels in Maryland. Apparently they don’t like the smell of burnt plastic as much as Pennsyltuckians. A lot of traffic on US 219 near Silver Lake in Maryland and the city of Oakland was pokey. People must come from Baltimore to vacation in Western Marlyand. But then it opened up to farm country, and I was in West Virgina without warning except for a brief county sign and a very stern sounding sign warning against littering – a $25,000 fine, lost of license, and jail for littering. Didn’t stop people from leaving litter on the road though as seen driving down US 219.

Maryland is probably a state best known for Spiro Agnew, our country’s only Grecian Vice President. Too bad he had to resign as Nixon’s Vice President for graft as Governor of Maryland and failing to pay on taxes on that graft. Also Martin O’Mallary, the former Democratic Governor best known for his unpopular gun control laws. Of course the whole time driving through the commonwealth, I drove carefully with an eye for cops, because I vaguely remember that Maryland is a state where they are really strict about their fender law, and are known to ticket people driving jacked up pickup trucks with tires sticking out past the fenders, as is the case with my truck. Lot of people have lifted trucks in Western Maryland, but that may be a southern thing too. People in Western Maryland may be relatively wealthy, with money from Baltimore and Washington suburbs to pay for their jacked up truck addiction.  Most had fenders but not all did. I am also not an expert on Maryland gun laws, but I figured I was probably okay just driving through the state with a cased, locked, and unloaded shotgun and 22 in back of my truck. I made it through the state, and took a deep breath once I realized I was in West Virigina. I have nothing good to say about Maryland, the state that is dominated by shitty Baltimore and Washington suburbs, with a neck following the Potomac River quite a ways out west. On the way back I will probably take US 220 through Maryland, which cuts through a lot narrower section of Western Maryland just to cover my fears of that god awful state that sticks between a lot of Pennsylvania and Virgina and West Virgina.

US 219 returns to being steep, windy, and narrow as you head into West Virigina and start climbing through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Actually, it gets narrow with sharp turns in Maryland  before you quietly cross – almost unannounced in West Virgina. The road is incredibly narrow, curvey, and steep climbing through the mountains. You think you’d never make it there, and eventually your in Thomas, WV. It seems like Thomas was a really hoping touristy place this Columbus Day Weekend, but as far as I could tell it lacked most of the chain stores. They probably are in a more populated place. Just down the road is Davis, WV. Davis has a bit more of a main street, it reminds me a lot of Lake Placid minus of course the Olympic tracks. Bought gas in Davis, one of those stations you have to go inside. I was hoping to hear the clerk’s strong West Virgina accent, but she didn’t have much of one. One of the older people in the store certainly had a classic West Virgina/Southern accent though. From there I took West Virgina 32 to the first major forest road I saw on map – FR 13 which runs along the top of Canaan Mountain. It was farthest north forest road of significance along the way, so I figured it was worth a try.

Forest Road 13, besides the unlucky number is astoundingly beautiful with marshlands and the kind of marshy forest you would associate with Dolly Sods Wilderness to the east of this area. Not a lot of maples of deciduous trees up on the top of the Canaan Mountain, but as you head down Forest Road 13, it descends into a deep hollow, following along a creek. Lots of colors from the hardwoods in this valley. This portion of Forest Road 13 is a bit scary to drive, because it’s only one lane wide, and difficult if not impossible in many portion for two cars to pass. Get too far off the road, and you could roll your truck, and assuming you don’t hit a tree, fall 100 feet or more into the hollow. A good gravel road, but so narrow once you down by the stream.

Put the truck in 4×4 low on the way back up the hill in case I had to crawl past a car on the way back up. Fortunately, I did not. Of course, when I got to camp I wanted to take the truck out of 4×4 low. Almost had a heart attack when I couldn’t get the transfer case to switch back to high. I forgot to go from 4×4 low to 4×4 high (and two-wheel drive), you have to have the truck in neutral when you hit the lever, otherwise nothing happens. I thought I was going to get stuck only being able to crawl somewheres, and have to find out what kind of services I could get by flagging down some random person. Literally had to get out the manual to find the answer – I knew there was a procedure, and they recommended you have the truck rolling when you switched – but forgot you had to be in neutral before shifting the case.

A few miles up Forest Road 13 from where I was camping was a big military encampment – there are like 50 brown Silverado pickups with brushguards parked up there. I thought it was Forest Service personal trucks – a big group for sure – but the rear plates said US Army. The guys I saw appeared to be military too. I don’t know if it’s military training or maybe it’s one of the groups that comes up here searching for old unexploded bombs that are occassionally found in the forest (the US Army used this area for war games and testing bombs during World War II). They are tent camping. I guess this must be part of wilderness training of some sort. Not something you would think you would find in the forest for sure.

On the way down into the valley, I spotted two campsites that were definite possibility for camping. I ended up camping for the night at one of the campsites, under starry skies. I don’t think the stars are quite as good here as the southern Allegheny National Forest, because we get some light pollution from the Washington DC metro area out here, but still much better then most of Upstate NY. A fairly big open campsite, but that was fine as I had extension cords to reach the lights where they needed to be on the trees. Reheated pork roast from a previous trip on the grill then started a fire. It was delicous and a nice evening. The sunset here is similar to that of the Allegheny National Forest – while I am 250 miles farther south, on the whole I’m jut as far west. Before dusk, somebody from Virgina stopped by to ask for directions to an overlook. I was shocked somebody would ask me, a New Yorker for directions. I guess like I must look like I’m from West Virgina with my big jacked up truck.

Sorry this is a long post, but it was a long day with a lot of adventures and stories to tell. I’m sure I will have more for tomorrow. At least I don’t have to drive any long distances tomorrow, as that US 219 got tiring with all the winding narrow road. I won’t be taking US 219 back north to Pennsylvania. It’s one of these roads you want to take once to see what the countryside is like, then avoid it because it’s so pokey, narrow, twisty, and steep. I probably will take US 220 up to I-99 and then overnight next Saturday night in Wellsboro in Grand Canyon Country, assuming the weather is good. I guess I could drive all the way back in Albany via I-81 / I-88 but that’s a hell of a trip in one day. I want to stay over somewheres in Pennsylvania on the way back, and I’d prefer to avoid the cities that I-81 runs through (Harrisburg, Scranton, among others).

October 10, 2015 evening

Good evening from the Allegheny National Forest somewhere near Marienville, PA. While I am well aware of where I am via the GPS, I have never been back on this road. Based on map I’m familiar with the road it connects with. It’s labeled a narrow, rough, dirt road, and while I didn’t think it was that bad in Big Red, it certain is narrow. I had to pass a hunter’s pickup, and I think we passed with about 5 inches between our pickups and he had to be 5 inches from the steep drop off from the road. The current temperature is 42 degrees under clear skies. The nice weather is expected to continue through Monday and then turn to rain for Tuesday. The rest of the week look okay after Tuesday. Tomorrow is expected to be 67 and partly sunny and Monday will be 70, at least in Marienville.

Today was a sucky day, but nothing went bad that will screw up the rest of the week. The main two things that went wrong was I simply planned to go too many miles in one day, and traffic was very heavy being Columbus Day. I think 90% of the time when I was on US 6, I was in a line of traffic. I like the open road, I hate to get stuck in a line of cars, keeping my eye on the road at all times to watch for stopped traffic. I-88 had the most traffic on it that I could remember, I spent most of the time either getting passed or passing cars. The foliage was wonderful most of the way across, although around Wellsboro it was green, and when I stopped at Kinzua Bridge the foliage was already past peak. With fall it always seems like you have either greens or foliage past done.

Getting started this morning I knew I wouldn’t get an early start. I did a lot of packing last night and shopping but I was dog tired after a long and stressful week. Work lately has been challenging. I’m glad I’m getting out of the office for the week. Rotating the tires on my truck and getting a state inspection proved to be a lot more of a process then I ever expected. The Quicky Lube I first tried to take my inspection at turned me away, because they said Big Red wouldn’t fit in the garage. Then I went to Gochee’s garage during the week, which did the inspection and rotated the tires, but forgot to do recalibrate the TPMS and left off one of the hub centric rings off of one of the wheels. It involved two trips back there, because I didn’t discover the TPMS error until I had driven 15 miles – the TPMS took a while to figure it was reading the spare tire and not one of the wheels that was actually rotating. Stupid shit, but it was early in the morning. I would be a little more concerned if it was something that could have left me broken down along the road – I’ll give them another try in the future, but if they screw up again, I will have to find yet another shop in Delmar. On top of all this, I was commuting out to my parents house every day, which meant I had little time to get ready at home during the week.

This morning I had to pack the food, the clothes, and few other things. I did do the water and most of the equipment last night. I decided to go to the laundromat in the morning, so I would have closer to the number of shirts and jeans I need for the week – I previously bought two additional pairs of jeans and shirts at Walmart – but I need 8 changes of clothes for the week, as I don’t want to have to visit some random laundromat in West Virgina or Virginia. I had to go to the bank, check the oil and fluids in the car, and top off the pressure in the tires, so they would be a nice 45 PSI, so I got a firm ride and not waste fuel or have excessive wear. Then I had to go to the bank, to pick up $200 in petty cash. I didn’t want to pick it up in advance, because I worried about losing it. I keep most of the petty cash in a locked box in my truck, until I need it, doling out when I get to firewood vendors, farm markets, tag sales, or campsites that requirement payments.

I have to admit I’ve gotten a bit bored with taking US 6 across Pennsylvania. I used like the trip and all the scenic vista and farm towns along the way, but I’ve made the trip a few too many times, and really need to come up with other places to go. Allegheny National Forest is fun, but I think I’ve done it a lot before. It seemed like a perfect stop over on paper on the way to West Virgina, although now I’m starting to think I’m a bit too far and will have to backtrack, even if I take US 219 south to West Virgina. I’m thinking the place I was originally planning to camp in West Virgina isn’t what I want, so I may have to head a bit farther east. Taking I-99 might have been a better choice. Driving all the way to Allegheny National Forest is a haul, especially on the way home. I have made this trip many times before in one day, heading back home, but never out to camp. Heading home, it’s a haul, but once you get on I-88 you set the cruise control on it and cue up a podcast, and nod off for about two hours. In contrast, going to Allegheny National Forest from Albany, puts all the small hick towns and the bulk of the trip after that long trip on I-88. When heading home, if you get home late, you can just collapse in your bed once reach home, the opposite is not true when you have to search for a campsite, as darkness is rapidly approaching.

I reached the Pine Creek Gorge at 3 PM today. Which sounds late, but it’s actually how long it takes after leaving Albany at 9:15 AM and stopping at the bank and Stewart’s for firewood plus multiple piss breaks because I drank too much coffee then water in the truck on the way over. I wanted to drive up to Colton Point, because in places the color looked perfect out there – and other hills it still looked green – but time wouldn’t let me. I knew I had a choice between Pine Creek George and Kinzua Bridge, and I chose later as I knew after today there was no chance I would get to Kinzua Bridge. The colors unfortunately were fairly dull and past peak on the bridge. Sunset was coming too fast, and even when I got to Kinzua Bridge at 5 PM, I knew I had only a half-hour because it was at minimum a half-hour to Kane, and whatever time I would take to find a campsite from there. I felt most of the day I was flying from place to place, and despite all the amazing color I saw, I didn’t get many pictures. It didn’t help that the best colors were along the expressways with no parking or on roads with absolutely no shoulder. Tomorrow may also be a rushed, long day – but not quite as many miles as today. But once I’m down in West Virgina, I don’t expect to be nearly as rushed for the rest of the week.

At Coudersport I stopped at McDonalds and got a coffee, which helped keep me awake as I headed to Kinzua Bridge and ultimately to Kane and then camp. I also stopped at a farm stand at Coudersport, and got some mushrooms and peppers. They didn’t have sweet corn, which was a disappointed. Probably the frost has ended the corn season in the Coudersport-area which is fairly high in elevation. I have a bit of Appalachian accent, but nothing like the farmer from Coudersport. Mid-western, Appalachian accent. Not like the more southern accents I expect to here once I reach the Virginas tomorrow. He seemed like a good guy, and had very affordable prices.

I got to Allegheny National Forest and wanted to camp near Kane or somewheres south. I remember the campsites along Forest Road 133 near Kane, but ended up deciding to take Forest Road 152 south from there, because I figured the farther south I went, the last south I had to go tomorrow. But it turns out there were no campsites on Forest Road 152 – despite driving 15 miles at the sky got darker and darker. Then I got on a forest road near Marienville, and ended up driving like 10 miles further south, not finding any campsites, until it was almost pitch black, and I found a campsite. Just in the nick of time. I had the firewood I bought at Stewart’s, so I got a fire started and got going.

And then stuff didn’t work. The 12-volt extension I have hooked from the deep cycle battery to my cellphone charger didn’t work when I plugged it in this morning. Total surprise. I think the fuse blew in the cord, but I don’t know. I will have to test it with a volt meter later in the week. I just plugged the cellphone charger into one of the main battery outlets, which works fine, but I like to have it run the accessory battery, in case I forget about it. Then later on the day, the brand new Halloween ghost lights I picked up at Walmart worked for 10 minutes until I bumped the string. $10 for 10 minutes of use seemed to suck. Then the string went dark. Eventually though the string started working again, once I played with the string. But it didn’t come back until I played every socket.

I am taking most of the photos on my Digital SLR or point and shoot camera, so I won’t be uploading most of the pictures until the evening each night, or when ever I have cellphone service. I’m not crazy about the quality of my new cellphone camera, so I have to download the photos from my other cameras to my laptop, then to the phone. But I will try to keep up with the photos as much as possible.

It was a crazy first day of vacation. Tomorrow is going to be another crazy day. I’m setting my alarm clock for 6:30 AM, which is coming fast. Unforutnately, out in Western Pennsylvania the sun doesn’t rise until 7:25 AM, so it will be a dark morning. But at least I have lights to help light the woods as I make breakfast and get going. I might just get coffee on the road, to speed camp tear down.

Good night! Sleep well.

October 4, 2015 evening

Good Evening on this Sunday Evening. I hope you weekend went smoothly and you had a relaxed weekend. The stars are beautiful tonight. It is currently 44 degrees and clear this evening. Feels a bit warmer than that without the breeze. Inside it’s not bad at 70 degrees – I don’t expect to turn on the heat before the nights drop below 25 degrees. Certainly today turned out to be the better weather-wise then was estimated earlier in the weekend. Tonight will have a low around 40 degrees with higher elevations getting the first hard frost of the year. The warm days of a few weeks ago seem to be far behind us.

I do like the smell of wood-smoke that your starting to smell in small towns around now that the temperature has dropped. Wood-smoke seems to scream fall, and represents cooler weather, with kind of a throwback to an earlier era in quaint New England and Upstate NY. I grew up in the country, and I know that wood-smoke isn’t just quaint and nice smelling, but a necessity to stay warm and the product of a lot of hard work cutting trees and splitting wood. But in the sense that Thanksgiving and fall colors are nice, wood-smoke is kind of nice. The heck with it being a pollutant in some urban areas and valleys.

That said, we aren’t looking at a really frigid week this week. Lots of sun for most of the week, with seasonable conditions. Mid-60s all week and a chance to possibly hit 70 later in the week. Not too bad for the first week of October in Albany. The cooler conditions might mean we actually see some good colors in the higher elevations by next week. It’s weird this year, it seems like some of the lower elevations and some just random colder or more shaded places are getting color a lot earlier then other places. I still can’t get over how little color there was at Moose River Plains two weeks ago – this is until I got home and pulled up the red channel in the GIMP imaging program.

Today I decided to go up to Mount Greylock in Massachussets. Gas is cheap. I thought about going to either Partridge Run or Beebe Hill State Forests for a walk with my shotgun, and see if I could drop some squirrels. But I decided against it, as I didn’t want to bug the bow hunters out there, and decided to go to Mount Greylock instead. I have to admit though, I didn’t hike all the way up the mountain, preferring to park at the last free lot as you head up the mountain and taking the 4/10th of a mile hike to the top. Still climbing over those rocks with my ankle was a bit painful from time to time. I’m fine walking on flat surfaces, but I still don’t have all my ankle strength back for climbing over rocks. Mount Greylock was nice, and seeing the hang gliders up there was pretty neat. That said, it was pretty crowded at the summit with a chilly breeze. The colors weren’t all the great, with greens prevailing along most of the mountains around Adams, Mass.

Later on I decided to hike to Stony Ledge. That hike was a mile and a half from the parking area, but it was it was a nice hike on a gravel roads. Colors were pretty tame with lots of green remaining at Stony Ledge, but it still was a nice a hike. Still, I hadn’t been at the Stony Ledge since December 2010, so it was nice to get back up there, and see the views in more seasonable conditions. Being that the entire hike here was a gravel road, my ankle didn’t give me any trouble whatsoever. A lot of people up there too, so it wasn’t really a quiet sitting on the ledge.

Today I didn’t get my tires rotated or truck inspected because the local lube joint said they couldn’t fit a truck as high as mine with the cap and lift kit in their garage. My truck is only about 7’8” and was about 7’ with the cap before the lift kit was put on, with the stock height at 6’4” but I guess the quick lube places have low clearance. I was a bit annoyed, because I really wanted to get the truck inspected and tires rotated today. I’m overdue with the tire rotation and I would like to maximize the life on the tires on my truck, because those 35-inch tires aren’t cheap. That said, I like my big jacked up truck, especially on long cruises in the country. Going to rotate the matching spare on it because that will give me a little more life in case one tire starts to wearing out early, and I won’t be putting a full-tread depth tire on while other ones are worn. For safety reasons, it’s actually good to use and replace the spare when the tires all wear out, as tire rubber ages just sitting around. I once put a brand new spare against a worn tire on an axle, and it proved to not ride very good, which is why I want to keep all the tires with about the same tread-ware.

I will call around tomorrow, I’m hoping one of the local garages can just rotate the tires and do the inspection on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. I definitely want to get it done before I go my trip next weekend. I have the spare tire off and in the bed of my truck, the hub caps off, and I tested all the lights on my truck, so I know it should pass and not take a long time once I find a shop that can handle my big truck. I know Watkins Spring in Albany can do it – as they did the alignment, but I’d rather go somewheres locally like Gochee’s in Delmar or maybe Town Line Auto in Greenville, as I’m driving out and staying at my parents house to do chores while they are on vacation.

Saturday I wired up two new lights under the truck cap, little blue spot lights that add a little more light under the cap near the shelf. I decided not to project them on the gun rack, but pointing up from the shelf to kick more light on the ceiling, which provides enough light to see around the truck cap and gives a little ambiance without consuming more then a half an amp or so. Combined with the light bar under the gun rack, set to a different color, they look pretty darn cool. I got a new switch block to replace the big bulky switch I had for the overhead LED lighting in the cab with a small, sleek power bus with built-in switches for controlling all the different lights from location. That said, the LED light bars have a separate switch to turn them on and select their color – they default to be switched off about 30 seconds after you disconnect them from power via the power bus switches.

I also got the spare tire off which proved to be a process because like usual I forgot how the spare tire hoist thing works. Once I got the manual off it wasn’t a big deal. I also took the hub caps off, because I figured it would be one less thing for the shop to have to do and mess up. I also feared something might get broken in their rush. The caps weren’t difficult to take off, but they did require four bolts each to remove, and some of those bolts required the assistance of the jack handle to get enough force to get them freed up. Those Rockstar wheels look weird without the hub caps, but I will put them back on once I get the tires rotated.

Continuing to get things packed and are working on a packing list for things I need to bring. I usually don’t make a packing list, but I didn’t want to forget things. So many things on the list – I’m over 50 items already. I mostly cleaned out the truck this weekend, at least the cab which was getting a mess with random reading materials, tools, fishing gear, and other stuff kind of just getting piled up in the cab. I also smelled something rotting back there, so I was kind of interested in getting things cleaned up so I could find it. Cleaned out a lot leaves and stuff from truck. Cleaned up the kitchen and bathroom a bit so when I return my apartment won’t be that icky.