Good morning! Monday’s come back around again. Next Monday is Columbus Day 🛥️. Alas at some point I’ll have to go back to Albany to make more money. Rain showers and 50 degrees at the Allegheny National Forest. ☔ Calm wind.The skies will clear around 10 pm.

It rained fairly hard at times last night it I’m not sure how much rain we actually got. 💦 It was definitely loud on the fiberglass roof of the truck cap. The rain is supposed to pull out fairly early today, not going to be the all day long rain here. Looks like West Virginia got a decent amount of rain last night but I’m not sure if the fire ban will be over yet. Regardless I might go down there, it’s to be decided tomorrow. I’d love 😍 to see West Virginia again, it’s been two years since I was last there. That said I’m quite content to be camping in the Allegheny National Forest and might still want to see more of Western NY.

I pitched the tent to have a place to escape the rain next to the heater 🎪 but so far it’s been warm and relatively dry enough that I’ve not used it. I’m hoping by morning the tent dries out, especially if I decide to break camp tomorrow to move on to other places.

So far the mosquitoes haven’t been bad this morning like they were yesterday. 🐜 Still raining here a bit and cold but I know yesterday I was glad I brought DEET with me.

One of the things I finally figured out is its best to cook eggs 🍳 on the camp stove in a frying pan on top of the griddle rather than directly on it. This keeps the eggs from sliding off on to the stove and is better for controlling the level of heat.

Today will rain, mainly before 10am. Patchy fog before 10am. 🌧 High of 55 degrees at 3pm. Seven degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around October 25th. Maximum dew point of 49 at 10am. 🏖️ Calm wind becoming west 5 to 7 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. It was somewhat humid. The high last year was 72 degrees. The record high of 89 was set in 1963.

Definitely could use some sun and if the weather is decent later on I plan to go for a drive to the Allegheny Reservoir and Rimrock 📷 in part because I really should top off the batteries 🔋. There is enough shade and the sun angle is low enough ☀ that I’m really not getting much solar.

The sun will set at 6:48 pm with dusk around 7:16 pm, which is one minute and 40 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for mostly cloudy skies ☁ and temperatures around 53 degrees. The dew point will be 46 degrees. There will be a west breeze at 7 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 29 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 45 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 42 degrees at 5am. Typical for tonight. West wind 3 to 6 mph. In 2018, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became light drizzle by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 50 degrees. The record low of 21 occurred back in 1964.

I was watching the camp garbage burn in the fire last night – especially the black smoke Styrofoam tray the meat 🍖 came in last night and a little Greta Thornburg came into my head saying “How Dare You”. I had to laugh a little. I’m not hauling back to Albany anything that I can burn to be landfilled🚮 in the Pine Bush forever for two dollars 💵 a bag at the transfer station.

But then again I remember the comstirnation that I caused on Facebook when I said I thought biodegradable camp soap was stupid. 💭 I understand the surficants in detergent aren’t as biodegradable as ordinary soap but they do break down eventually and are pretty harmless to the environment is disposed away from water. 🌊 Most old houses and farms dispose of gray water to pipes away from the house. Yeah, they’re is a stinky gray area where the pipe comes out from the soaps and detergents but if they are far away enough from creeks ain’t harming nothing. 🚰

I also hunt with lead ammunition 🔫 and use lead sinkers for fishing 🎣 at least the larger ones that are still legal. I also use lead solder for electronics projects at home. 🔬 I totally get banning the small sinkers and not using lead shot when duck hunting or having lead in commercial electronics. But that’s a thing of scale and real harm – waterfowl get easily poisoned by lead shot. Lead poisoning is bad – I know people who have accidentally gotten shot and suffer from lead poisoning. But where it makes sense, use the right technology, even if Greta Thornburg does not approve. And I do pick up litter 🚮 I find in the woods, recycle cans and glass ♻, and make sure my poop and toilet paper is well buried. 💩

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until Average High is 55 🍂 when the sun will be setting at 6:16 pm with dusk at 6:44 pm. On that day in 2018, we had mostly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 51 and 41 degrees. We hit a record high of 78 back in 1971.