Good morning! Happy Tuesday, back to work from Speculator. Partly sunny and 59 degrees in Speculator, NY. There is a northwest breeze at 5 mph. 🍃.

By working up here I could stay another day in the Adirondacks and if I camp overnight, ⛺ I’ll drive home Wednesday evening about when the weather gets more stormy. I’ve been off the internet all weekend as I had no service which is nice for a change, it’s good to be away from work and everything else. 💼 With the primaries and everything else going on it seems like most of weekends previously were quite busy.

Today will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 77 degrees at 4pm. Six degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around September 1st. Maximum dew point of 59 at 8am. West wind 5 to 7 mph. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning with more sun in the afternoon. It was humid. The high last year was 91 degrees. The record high of 101 was set in 1930.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 1:05 pm with sun having an altitude of 66.9° from the due south horizon (-3.1° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 2.6 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 7:50 pm with the sun in the west-northwest (293°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-northwest (300°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 8:32 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 22 seconds with dusk around 9:05 pm, which is 52 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent 🌒 Moon in the west-northwest (293°) at an altitude of 5° from the horizon, 232,588 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 9:49 pm. At sunset, look for partly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 71 degrees. The dew point will be 57 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 6 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 54 minutes of daytime, a decrease of one minute and 50 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 58 degrees at 5am. Four degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around August 27th. Maximum dew point of 57 at 8pm. Northwest wind around 6 mph becoming light and variable after midnight. In 2019, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It became humid as the night progressed. It got down to 66 degrees. The record low of 47 occurred back in 1970.

It was a nice long weekend camping at Piseco Powley Road, at times quite nice but for a while Sunday evening when the wind died down it was rather muggy. 😰 But when the breeze picked up it was pretty cold nice. Rained from a thunderstorm late Sunday night. ⚡ I’ve enjoyed being off the grid, having no cell service 📱 or ability to take calls all of the long weekend. I’ll upload some pictures later in the day. 📷

Saturday I walked the closed portion of Piseco Powley Road. 🚧 The south bridge is damaged from the October 31st storm and repairs will be necessary for Stratford to fix the other sections. That said, beyond the substructure of the bridge being rebuilt and some fill and a culvert needing replacing, most of the tools to rebuild the road shouldn’t be particularly difficult or unusual to implement.

On Saturday I also patched the hole in the screen tent. 🎪 It isn’t pretty as it doesn’t quite match in color and I wish I had had gotten the fabric a little tighter but it provides a good bug free area for camping. 🐜 Bugs have been bad this weekend, especially the deer fly although not so bad in the Potholers and times in the screen tent have been nice. After dark and early mornings I’ve been using the hammock a fair bit as the deer flies aren’t as bad then.

The Potholers were nice in the heat 🏊, I spent several hours laying in them and cooling off. I sat down there listening to podcasts 🎧and just enjoying the cold water 💦 and hot sun ☀. During the weekend there was a fair number of people there although I expect I would see a lot more were the road to be fully open. I am hopeful though that once the bridge is repaired, they can get the road repaired relatively quickly. I’m still thinking it might be done by hunting season. That will certainly make visiting the Potholers a lot more of an option come 2021.

Only one real shit moment at camp. 😮 On Monday evening after parking at camp I noticed something hanging out below the front axle like something was broken. Turned out to be just a root but I was afraid that I had broken something on my truck. Just a silly shadow of a root. Pulled it up and tossed it in the woods. This campsite is a bit of a mud wallow at the parking spot but has been as long as I’ve camped here. At least it’s very quiet here with the road closed heading south bound from the Potholers – the only traffic is those going down there.

I thought about moving down to Powley Place last evening so I could enjoy the stars ✨but ultimately I decided against that. It was fine, I was in by 9:30 and at that point wouldn’t have seen many stars. But I did stop by Powley Bridge briefly this morning to see the new temporary bridge and observe what has changed since the October 31st flood last year.

On this day in 1925, Dayton, Tennessee high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100. 👮 Darn criminals ruining our country. The judge incorrectly set the fine, rather then letting the jury do it, so his conviction was overturned on appeal. 🏫 The law would remain on the books until it was repealed 1967. Also in 1983, the world’s lowest temperature in an inhabited location is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F). ⛄ They should build a pipe and send it up north to cool off people efficently.

Been doing a lot of reading 📖 while up in camp. Re-read Heather Thomas’ Raising Beef Cattle 🐮 which is an interesting book on the ins and outs of cows. They’re pretty amazing animals which do pretty good most of the time on grasses, water, salt and some careful human hands to train them and take care of their needs. Beef cattle don’t have the complicated nutritional needs of the high performance Holstein cows 🐄 used on most dairies.

Should be a great weekend. 😎 Saturday, mostly sunny, with a high near 82. Maximum dew point of 59 at 8am. Sunday, a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 83. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Maximum dew point of 63 at 7pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 83 degrees.

I haven’t decided if I will stay all week in the Adirondacks. 🗻 Only three nights until the weekend so I could get a campsite near Speculator and work up here to the weekend and then go back to Piseco Powley Road. I’m undecided though because working and camping can be kind of tiring, especially if I don’t get enough sleep. 😴

Looking ahead, there are 15 weeks until Election Day 2020 🗳️ when the sun will be setting at 4:45 pm with dusk at 5:15 pm (Standard Time). On that day in 2019, we had partly sunny skies with a few rain showers and temperatures between 53 and 30 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 53 degrees. I was really sick that day last year with Lyme disease. We hit a record high of 75 back in 1990.