Good afternoon! Clouds, a few sprinkles and a little sun and 60 degrees here on the Hunter Mountain overlook of the West Kill Valley. 🌦 There is a west-northwest breeze at 15 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 49 degrees. The skies will clear around 4 pm. I’m waiting for it, hoping to get better pictures and videos. 😩

This afternoon will have a slight chance of showers. Partly sunny 🌦, with a high of 60 degrees at 2pm. 21 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around October 15th. Maximum dew point of 49 at 2pm. Northwest wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. It was humid. The high last year was 82 degrees. The record high of 96 was set in 1949.

I decided today to hike up to Hunter Mountain along the West Kill trail. 🚶 Later on I plan to see Pratts Rocks in Prattsville and then head up to Burnt Rossman. ⛺ Tomorrow I’ll do some fishing 🎣 in Looking Glass Pond and hit up the farm stands in the Schoharie Valley and then swim 🏊 in Mine Kill State Park.

I fully admit if I was a responsible adult I would have gone to the Save the Pine Bush organizational meeting 🌲and stayed in town to save gas on my limited budget. But summer is rapidly fading away and I wanted to get out of town before its done and I’m sure rainy weekends aren’t that far off. ☔ I don’t feel that guilty though, I’ve spent more time on that map and researching things over the past few weeks than anything else I’ve been doing.

The sun will set at 8:04 pm with dusk around 8:35 pm, which is one minute and 21 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for partly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 54 degrees. The dew point will be 47 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 15 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 4 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 23 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 47 degrees at 4am. 14 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around September 26th. Northwest wind 10 to 15 mph. In 2018, we had partly cloudy skies in the evening, which became light rain by the early hours of the morning. It was somewhat humid. It got down to 64 degrees. The record low of 46 occurred back in 1941.

Driving through Greenville and stopping at the grocery store 🏬 I had forgotten what a hick town I grew up in. Fun place although I don’t know if I’d ever want to go back now with all the gun restrictions 🔫 and regulations today on open burning 🔥 – and I was surprised how expensive things were at the store. But then again in Albany I mostly shop for things on sale at Walmart. I do like the small towns and spend most of my vacation time there but its still cultural shock to go back to the community I haven’t been in regularly for going on two decades now. I’ve worked in other hick towns but the hometown is strange. The girls at the grocery store with their Irish red hair are very cute. 😍 But as I like to say, their husbands own more guns than me. Fit in well with my big jacked up truck 🚚 though. That said, I can’t see moving back to the country until I can live in a place where I can have fires and burn whatever I want on my own land. 🚜 More on that later.

I forgot how popular the Catskills are these days 🗻 but they sure are beautiful. I should do some more Catskill peaks this fall, maybe truck cap camping in Schoharie or just do day trips. I’ve been taking a lot of pictures but mostly on my 35mm camera 📷 so it will have to wait for posting until Sunday or Monday. I’m also making a ton of videos. Fortunately, despite hitting a lot of traffic around the fire tower 🗼 the ledge I’m on is relatively quiet and has nice views when you peer over the tree line. 🌲🌲🌲🌲Sun is coming out ☀ and I’m lazy so I’m procrastinating a bit but I should hurry up so I also have time to see Pratts Rocks.

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until Average High Falls To 79 ️Degrees ⛱️️️ when the sun will be setting at 7:43 pm with dusk at 8:12 pm. On that day in 2018, we had sunny and temperatures between 85 and 57 degrees. 🌻 We hit a record high of 95 back in 1947.