Good evening! Cloudy and 52 degrees in Ohiopyle. A big drop in temperature from before the front came through — this evening was actually quite muggy before the rain with the mercury around or maybe a bit below 80 degrees (for October, in the Laurel Highlands). There is a west-northwest breeze at 10 mph. The dew point is 54 degrees. The skies will clear tomorrow around 2 pm.

Tonight will be cloudy, with a low of 47 degrees at 6am. Seven degrees above normal. Northwest wind around 10 mph. In 2016, we had mostly clear skies. It got down to 45 degrees. The record low of 25 occurred back in 1978.

Tonight will have a Waning Crescent Moon with 14% illuminated. The moon will rise tonight at 3:37 am. The New Moon is on Thursday night with mostly clear skies. The Beaver Moon is on Friday, November 3rd. The sun will rise at 7:29 am with the first light at 7:02 am, which is one minute and 3 seconds later than yesterday. Tonight will have 12 hours and 52 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes and 32 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be partly sunny, with a high of 54 degrees at 4pm. Clearing mid-day but quite cool. Six degrees below normal. Northwest wind around 10 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies with more clouds in the afternoon. The high last year was 68 degrees. The record high of 88 was set in 1947. There was a dusting of snow in 2009.

Next weekend looks to be quite warm with temperatures running 14 degrees above normal. Next Saturday, sunny, with a high near 72. Maximum dew point of 51 at 2pm. Next Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 72. Maximum dew point of 53 at 8pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 58 degrees.

It was a pretty nice drive down through Pennsylvania to Ohiopyle State Park. Warm day for sure, but more clouds then Iwould have liked. The scenery around Trout Run on US 15, the Applachian Thruway is quite dramatic, almost something like a movie. It was particularly good today with the fog. Unfortunately for some reason the dash cam cut out through part of the valley, I might have hit the wrong button or maybe the GPS hopping caused the camera to crash. Also, very good scenery along I-99 heading over Bald Eagle Mountain. Both the northern and central parts of Pennsylvania are quite scenic.

The Flight 93 Memorial is quite moving. Especially when you go in the visitor’s center with the old video tapes playing back of that terrible morning, you are brought back to that time. Beautiful sweeping landscapes have been made of that hallowed ground, which used to be old gob or clumb piles — coal strip mining residue — but now it’s sweeping fields, dotted by wetlands and fanstatic views of the surrounding Laurel Highlands. Really pretty nice country around there. Of course the people that visit the Flight 93 Memorial kind of creeped me out — there were no shortage of bald, heavy old men riding motorcycles, of the Vietnam War era. Trump supporters, still bitter about how the Vietnam war ended.

I also visited Shawnee State Park briefly. Seems like a fairly popular state park — at least with the weekend’s beautiful warm weather. I thought about camping there, as it was 3:30 PM when Ieft the Flight 93 Memorial, but it was only about an hour and ten minutes to Ohiopyle, and I wanted to check that out — at least come the mornning. Parts of Bradford and Somerset County are quite spectular, other parts are more generic but still beautiful farm country. Maybe not the kind of scenery you have in the Pennsylvania Wilds around Trout Run or even south of Wellsboro but still quite nice.

That one section of US 30, aka Lincoln Highway over the Grandview Ridge is quite steep and narrow. I can only imagine the olden days back before the Pennsylvania Turnpike was completed. It was congested enough as it is with only the local traffic. Part of it reminded me a lot of NY 23A past Kaaterskill Falls. Imagine when that was the primary route between Philadephia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago in the early years of the century. You could understand why rail was for a long time the preferred method of travel over America’s otherwise pretty bad roads.

Made it to the Ohiopyle State Park around 4:45 PM. Drove around, picked out a campsite. The campsites are quite small and narrow but so be it. I found a decent site. I don’t like how close the campsite are to each other and how much they’ve packed in, but that’s how most intensive use campgrounds are. So be it. Tomorrow when I get to West Virigina, it will be wilderness camping again. $26 for the night plus $6 for firewood seemed steep, but so be it. At least I got a hot shower after sitting out in the rain (which started after dinner around 8 PM), by the campfire, which I was determined to enjoy. Sitting out in the rain ain’t bad if you end it with a hot shower.

Left my card reader and extra microSD card at home so I ended up buying another one for $50 at Staples. I know the microSD cards all come with a SD card adapter but they don’t alway work with my laptop. So I needed one with a USB port. I probably could have gotten better deal at Walmart but I wasn’t going to drive all around and the nearest Walmart was a ways away. At least I will be able to preserve some of my memories of the trip, and use the dash cam to take videos and post pictures — that’s where the road pictures you have been seeing on the blog come from. I can tap a button on the dash cam and it snaps a picture. Simple but it takes decent pictures of the roadside experience without stopping or having to find parking on often narrow and steep roads. 
In four weeks on November 12 the sun will be setting at 5:03 pm (Standard Time), which is one hour, 33 minutes and 42 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2016 on that day, we had partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 45 and 27 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 49 and 33 degrees. The record high of 68 degrees was set back in 1909.

Looking ahead, Daylight Savings Time Ends is in 3 weeks, Cold Moon is in 7 weeks and New Years Eve is in 11 weeks.