Good evening! Rain and 33 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☔ There is a east breeze at 5 mph. 🍃. Back home on this rainy evening. It would have been fairly miserable camping tonight and it looks like we are stuck in this rainy pattern for a while, then it will get cold. Temperatures will drop below freezing at Wednesday around noontime. ☃️

I got home and unpacked. 💼 Not too difficult as my gear didn’t get that muddy and I only had one day worth of food and clothing packed. Moreover I’ve been leaving more and more of my camping gear in the truck year round and I have seperate cooking utensils now for at home versus at camp. 🍴 I had fish for dinner 🐠 and started looking at storing the dash cam photos and videos 📹 I got. Tomorrow I’ll walk down to the library and upload them if it’s not raining too hard. It’s kind of nice that I don’t have to work tomorrow.

Tonight will rain before 1am, then rain or freezing rain. 🌧 Low of 33 degrees at 10pm. 17 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around November 12th. East wind around 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Little or no ice accumulation expected. Probably just rain here. In 2018, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 23 degrees. The record low of -21 occurred back in 1933.

Tonight will have a Waxing Crescent Moon 🌙 with 22% illuminated. The moon will rise at 10:33 am. The is on Wednesday night with partly cloudy skies. The sun will rise at 7:24 am with the first light at 6:52 am, which is 13 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 14 hours and 55 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 33 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will rain or freezing rain before noon, then rain between noon and 4pm, then rain and sleet after 4pm. High of 34 degrees at 12pm. Two degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 22nd. Southeast wind 8 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Little or no ice accumulation expected. New sleet accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 33 degrees. The record high of 53 was set in 1984. 10.9 inches of snow fell back in 2000.❄

I have tomorrow off because the original plan had me out camping. ⛺ It will be a bit of a staycation I guess. Tuesday if there is still snow left in the hilltowns I’m thinking to a local state forest to back country camp in a hot tent for New Years Eve 🎇 but the key 🔑 is I need snow on the ground and roads not too icy for that to happen. No guarantees at this point.

I do want to do more winter camping for sure. Ideally I’d prefer to stay somewhere I can drive my truck to so I have electric 💡 and gear nearby but that’s not a show stopper for me. I’m really interested to find out if Moscow Hill campground is plowed, as that would be perfect even if it’s just far enough to get off the road. That said, I bet there are a lot of snowmobiles that assemble in that area going brap brap all winter long but even so I bet it thins out at night. 📞 I’ll have to call the DEC office in Sherburne and find out. Also if the snow isn’t deep I should be able to get there as the ground is really solid there due to the reinforcement for the horse trailers and hooves during the summer 🐴.

I don’t know but I was just taken in by the beauty of Southern Madison County and Northern Otsego County. 🐮 Yeah things did kind of smell earthy and like cow poop 💩 but that’s country living. The browns and the grays were pretty, they stirred something in my soul. I think it’s so fortunate to those who are able to chip a life out of the rural country, if by agriculture and one of many other jobs, some small, some decent paying but all tough with limited opportunity compared to the big cities.

Between the forested, snow covered hills full of wildlife and the rich farmlands below its such beautiful country. ⛲ So many quaint old farm houses and run down trailers, homesteaders with a family pig 🐽 or cow to muddy farms with old fashioned tie stall barns 🐮, milking twice a day with surge milkers and fifty year old open cab tractors with box spreaders. Weeds growing up around broken and forgotten farm equipment, piles of manure rotting away to be spread someday in the future. Trees to be split and someday warm the farm house. Four wheelers for fun and getting around the farm, a goat 🐐 tied to a tree, piles of junk to be scrapped some day or burnt to a crisp in a bonfire. 🔥 Rural scenes like this exist across the nation but I live in the city and make my money 💵 doing the urban thing now saving for a better tomorrow when I can own land in a freer state and have an off grid property, hopefully in an area as beautiful and wonderful as Southern Madison County.

I’d someday love 😍 to live in a place like that but not in an oppressively liberal state like New York which doesn’t really understand rural communities. After all two out of three New Yorkers live in the metropolitan region 🚇 – that is Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Westchester, New York City and Long Island. Might soon be 70 percent of New Yorkers. Pennsylvania is nice but it kind of suffers from the same problem – and its also an incredibly expensive state to live in especially with the recent gas tax hikes ⛽. City life may be getting better, as may regulations for fair commerce with business but its also an incredibly hard to make it in the small towns. I don’t think Trump is the answer but neither is his counterpart closer to home who exists 180 degrees out of phase but in many ways is similar.

2020 is going to be a big year for all of us 🎇 but my hope is it will be another step forward towards a better life. I’ll work hard and try to advance my career and help my company grow and move forward. What’s good for them is ultimately good for myself. 💼 I know working in the windowless basement office 🏢, paying my dues, someday will pay off with more career advancement, more money to save 💵 towards that off grid property out in the country.

Climate change will probably really kick in during the next decade, and it’s going to be a wild ride for mankind. I don’t think whatever comes out of the next election in the coming year will change that but it will bite us in the next decade and prove that we are doing much too little too late. 🌎 People use per capita stats to blame the guy with the rusty pickup and burping cows in the tie stall barn in Madison County but if you don’t look at the big cities for the root of the problem your just playing games with statistics. 🔢But my focus is enjoying life and saving for a better future and not saving the world.

In four weeks on January 26 the sun will be setting at 5:00 pm,🌄 which is 30 minutes and 26 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had partly cloudy and temperatures between 28 and 14 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 31 and 14 degrees. The record high of 59 degrees was set back in 1950.

Looking ahead, National Bird Day 🐧 is in 1 weeks, 5:30 PM Dusk 🌆 is in 4 weeks, 37th Birthday 🎉 is a month away, Ground Hog Day 🐻 is in 5 weeks, Snow Moon 🌕 is in 6 weeks, March 🌨 is in 9 weeks, Daylight Savings Time 🌆 is in 10 weeks, Ides of March ✝ is in 11 weeks, Palm Sunday 🌴 is in 14 weeks, Easter 🐰 is in 15 weeks, Mothers Day 👩‍ is in 19 weeks, Pack Rat Day 🐀 is in 20 weeks, Strawberry Moon 🌕 is in 23 weeks and Fathers Day 👨 is in 24 weeks.

Good morning! Happy Sunday. Next Sunday is National Bird Day 🐧. Partly cloudy and 33 degrees at the Glimmerglass State Park. ⛅ Calm wind. Temperatures will drop below freezing at around 6 pm. ☃️ I’ll be home by then.

It was kind of a cold start to the morning – 25 degrees according to Big Red’s DIC. 📟 I started Big Red up for a few minutes this morning after I saw the voltage ⚡ drop on the starting battery 🔋 after opening the door due to the cold. It was a nice night and I was plenty warm under the covers but a bit cold after I got up until I turned on the heater and sat by it for a while. I could have set up the tent 🎪 but I knew if I had the tent I would have probably stayed in late warning myself next to the heater.

I made eggs and hash 🍳 for breakfast. It was a good breakfast along with a nice big cup of coffee ☕. Or three. Started a small fire to burn the camp trash and toilet paper, as the ground was too cold to easily bury it in a deep hole and the Porta Potties they have in the summer 🚻 have long been removed. Any poop 💩 that doesn’t burn hot buried in the ash and what wasn’t sanitized by this fire will be gone the next fire 🔥. Sat and watched the sun rise over the horizon ☀ about nine o’clock. Nice morning, not too cold after sunrise. Broke camp around 10.

Today will rain, mainly after 4pm. 🌧 High of 37 degrees at 1pm. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 13th. Light southeast wind. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 50 degrees. The record high of 71 was set in 1984. 6 inches of snow fell back in 1915.❄

The sun will set at 4:33 pm with dusk around 5:05 pm, which is 44 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for rain 🌧 and temperatures around 35 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 9 hours and 3 minutes of daytime, an increase of 30 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will rain and freezing rain, possibly mixed with sleet before 11pm, then freezing rain between 11pm and 2am, then rain, possibly mixed with freezing rain after 2am. Low of 31 degrees at 8pm. 15 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around November 20th. East wind 6 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New ice accumulation of around a 0. 2 of an inch possible. Little or no sleet accumulation expected. In 2018, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 23 degrees. The record low of -21 occurred back in 1933.

Forecast somewhat improved from Friday in Hector so I kind of wish I packed more clothes 👚 and food 🍲 so I could go out there but heading back to Glimmerglass is the wrong direction for the Finger Lakes. It still would have been a pretty cold and wet night camping up on Hector Backbone. Tuesday now promises to be better but who knows. It was a nice night 🌃 out in Madison County and it’s been a long time since I’ve been to either the Rogers Environmental Education Center or even the Moscow Hill Camping Area. It’s pretty nice there off season and it’s also right on the plowed, asphalt county road. Plus the sites are really reinforced so they’re not really muddy. This time Iucked out again and I didn’t have to burn any of the bagged wood I originally bought in November for that camping trip to the Adirondacks. I also much preferred the rural scenery to the Adirondacks – I go north too much.

I was really surprised how quiet it was up at camp. Very little traffic on Moscow Road at night, seems like most people turn the other way from Quaker Hill to head over to Hamilton. I heard the coyotes🐺 and what sounded like a weasal last night for a while 🐆 and occasionally moo of a cow from the beef farm 🐂 down the road and some tractor noises 🚜 this morning.

I am starting to think that the DEC plows the Moscow Camping Area loop ⛺ in the winter ❄ which would be cool if that’s true. I noticed that there appears to be some snow piles along the loop road but it could have just been a hunter who had a truck do it when they camped during big game season. But I’m thinking that they might do it for the snowmobile parking 🅿 but I’d be quite happy if I could come up here mid winter and have a place to camp and go cross country skiing 🎿. I don’t mind dragging my gear back a little ways on a sled or digging out a parking spot but I gotta have a place to park. Madison County can be kind of icy in the winter though and it looks like the steep and twisty county roads are mostly cleared with sand so that’s a consideration.

After cleaning my propane camp lantern 🏮 it now is super bright 🔆 again for the first time in years. I had forgotten what full output looked like. No soot on the globe either. It was just so plugged up with carbon probably because I usually run it for long periods on its lowest settings. I mostly run it as a backup in case the electric lights shut off due to an under voltage condition. I did crack the glass in it the last time I packed but it worked fine with the crack. I bought a second globe 🌐 last year but I’ve not yet had to use it.

The rechargeable LED lantern 🏮 I got for Christmas worked pretty good too. I don’t think it will replace the gas lantern for reliable all evening light in the winter but it is nice to have have something that is brighter than a flashlight, can be switched on and off, dimmed or brightened 🔆 and is lightweight, not corded and not hot like the lantern. Electric lights are fine but they have a cord. 🔌

They use a ton of sand 👡 on the roads in Madison County, especially the hills for traction. It’s certainly a lot better for the environment and cheaper but it covers everything with mud. All the cars are a deep brown. 🚙 Between the high moisture corn 🌽 the farms are hauling out, and the manure being spread on the fields 💩, and just the gray somewhat winter foggy 🌁 skies everything is so brown. But a nice shade of brown. I do like seeing the working land though and the freedom of rural life and maybe a handful of illicit burn barrels too. 🔥 Definitely a different experience than the Adirondacks. 🗻

As previously noted, next Sunday is National Bird Day 🐧 when the sun will be setting at 4:39 pm with dusk at 5:11 pm. On that day in 2019, we had rain and temperatures between 40 and 29 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 31 degrees. We hit a record high of 64 back in 1950.