Today is hazy, hot and humid. Probably pushing the upper 70s to mid 80s here in the Western Adirondacks but likely to reach 90 plus in the city for the first time in two years. They talk a lot about global warming but it seems like New York has been in a cold spell the past few years. The west coast, however is baking.

I’m sure that it will be as hot as hell when I get back to Albany, which is why I hung out at the Potholers as long as possible, and still have a reasonable amount of time to get home and unpack in the blazing heat.

Friday night I drove up to camp in what was mix of showers and cloudy conditions. No heavy rain but enough to get the woods wet. Traffic however was bumper to bumper and slow all the way from Albany to Schenectady. I decided to come back to Piseco Powley Road this weekend primarily because I thought I left a backpack along the banks of the East Canada Creek.

I only discovered that the backpack was missing on Tuesday, and while it didn’t have anything valuable in it except a set of keys, I still wanted to retrieve it if possible. Everything else in the backpack was of marginal value, closer to garbage and future carbon dioxide then useful products. I kind of cared about the keys, as those included a set of keys for my truck that are the chipped type, which might be expensive to replace – especially if the $25 Amazon uncut but chipped keys turned out not to pair correctly. I decided it wasn’t worth driving an hour and a half to go search for the keys after work, only to possibly turn around empty handed and drive back home empty handed in the dark. I figured at this point nobody going to bother the backpack within the two days until the weekend or if somebody finds it, they’ll call the forest ranger. I called the ranger to let him know of the lost backpack. Honestly, my biggest concern was a forest beast would drag and shred the backpack into the woods or waterwater, with the keys forever lost.

I found the backpack with the keys and now rotting food inside it. And a somewhat moldy version of American Hunter magazine with of course my home address on the cover. Missing were a crappy leaking compass, cigarette lighter and a beat up old Nalgene water bottle. I can’t imagine anyone would steal either… It may have fallen out some point in the weekend. The backpack was pretty much shot before it got left out with a broken zipper and fabric with holes. I’m taking the keys to my gun safe, truck cap, office and apartment off the second key ring I carry in my day pack for emergencies. Some day hopefully soon my gun safe might be worth robbing. And while I always carefully police my campsite when I leave for the weekend to ensure there is no scraps of litter, bungee cords or loss supplies, I’m now going to a make sure to double check I have my day pack and second set of keys with me. I didn’t catch the pack because it was by the water and not in the campsite.

The Powley Bridge site and other sites nearby were taken, so I decided to try out the campsite on top of the hill you climb the hill past Brayhouse Brook and the Potholers. I had never camped at this site and while I knew the driveway was a bit soft, the site is on a hill and well drained, so I figured it would be good in the rainy conditions expected for the evening.

As I started to get the site set up, it started to drizzle again, but the site had good trees for hanging the tarp. I hung it up and got the table set up and quickly got a fire started using some nice Stewarts kiln dries firewood and burnable garbage I brought from home. Got the lights wired up and made hot dogs up with all the fixings. Good dinner. The drizzle on the tarp didn’t seem to bother me or the campfire much. Stayed up until 11:30 p.m. All and all a pleasant ending to a tough work week.

Wet and humid are the best way to describe the conditions on Saturday morning. While wet and humid are vastly better conditions in the woods then pouring rain and cold and wet, they are hardly ideal for camping. Everything gets wet just from the dampness, even if it’s not raining much. By about 2 PM it started to clear a bit.

Did some target shooting for a while, and some reading Saturday afternoon. Once the sun came out and the humidity creeped up, started getting a bit warm. Mosquitoes and those gosh darn horse flies started biting, and I had to get the DEET out. Freaking Westchester ammo seems to jam more. Maybe I just need to clean and lubricate my shotgun more. I do want to get some kind of rimfire rifle that’s cheaper to shoot. Thinking about a 17 HMR, as unlike 22 ammo is seems to be usually in stock at Walmart, and can be had for 10 cent a round or $10 for 100. Went down to the Potholers for about an hour, took some pictures with my waterproof case. Seemed to do the job, even if all the case is a heavy vinyl zip lock bag with a heavier sealing mechanism. It was $12 to keep my $40 smartphone dry.

Cooked up these super delicious BBQ flavor chicken breasts and rice for dinner. The smell of the breasts was so delicious, I could have almost eaten them raw. Once they were cooked, they were as amazing as they smelled. Shoprite did an amazing job with the sauce. They weren’t particularly more expensive than regular breasts, although I probably could have bought some marinade and made up something similar in a zip lock bag.

I had a nice campfire the second night, but it wasn’t quite the same as the previous night, because I had burnt up most of the Stewart’s wood and in the summer heat was pretty lazy and didn’t gather up much wood. Still I perked up the fire, put on some podcasts and stayed up until 11:30.

The next morning was also pretty lazy, enjoying a nice breakfast, and listening to a podcast, slowly took apart camp, mostly hurrying with the tarp, too ensure I got it down and put away with the constant threat of thunderstorms. None really happened, and things were good. Did some more target practice, finished off the coffee.

As I write this post, I’m down at the Potholers on this hot summer day. The water is refreshing. There really is no place I’d rather be with such warm weather. Ran into somebody from Westerlo down there, taking a family vacation up here. Can’t beat this weather for the Potholers.

This is the lazy weekend that was. Sometimes it nice to get away in the heat and just hang in the water. Back to Albany now, more photos later.