Well, I hope you are making your Monday great on this beautiful final Monday morning of April 2017. Next week is the start of the month of May. The temperature is 56 degrees on the way up to 71 degrees. Partly cloudy but I expect more clearing later. Dogwood and many of the other trees are in bloom in the Adirondacks.

The sun will set at 7:48 pm with dusk around 8:18 pm, which is one minute and 9 seconds later than yesterday. Today will have 13 hours and 50 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 38 seconds over yesterday.

I am not sure if I will get out of work in time to get down to the park but it might start to cloud up pretty early. I think it will still be nice enough to enjoy a beer out back and listen to the spring peepers and maybe the bared owl, assuming that he is still around this year. Who. WHOOO….

Tonight will have a chance of light rain, mainly after 5am. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 44 degrees at 5am. Three degrees above normal. Northeast wind 3 to 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2016, it got down to 45 degrees under cloudy skies. The record low of 23 occurred back in 1965.

As previously noted, next Monday is May Day when the sun will be setting at 7:56 pm with dusk at 8:27 pm. On that day in 2016, we had rain and temperatures between 54 and 44 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 65 degrees. We hit a record high of 86 back in 2001.

In other words, black fly season is coming. The snow is still on some of the roads so many are still soft at least where the frost is out. There was still a fair amount of snow and ice in various spots in the Adirondacks. That said, I have a lot going on in May, so I don’t know how many times I’ll get out camping. But in the heavy woods away from the creeks and marshes, black flies aren’t that bad.

Honestly, I’m looking forward to summer and spending my weekends at the beach or at least the Potholers. This summer I want to explore Moss Island in Little Falls via kayak. I can probably camp at Piseco-Powley Road, and then drive down to Little Falls. It really ain’t that far in the grand scheme of things.

I was looking at the Big Buddy Heater filter modules, and yes they do connect to the standard propane hoses that I use for the camp stove and lantern. It looks like they are like around $10-15 a piece, so I think I will order two. I do need to replace one of the propane hoses I had last year for the lantern, because last year when I was using the lantern I kept smelling propane and much to my shock, I saw liquid propane (!) dripping out of the hose. Some how the hose developed a crack, possibly from bouncing around inside of the stove. I quickly turned off the propane tank, shut off the lantern, and stepped away from the hose. It was pretty shocking.