Good evening! Evening before Labor Day. 👷

Bugs are bad tonight but at least we didn’t get any rain this weekend. Tomorrow though will be wet so I plan to take down a lot of camp before bed.

Mostly cloudy and 66 degrees at the Perkins Clearing. ☁ Calm wind. The dew point is 65 degrees. The skies will clear Tuesday around 4 pm.

I have to admit this weekend was a lot less inspired than I had imagined. ⛺ Maybe it was all the shrimp 🦐 and clams 🦪 and sweet corn 🌽 boiled and drank with beer. 🍻 Or the fact I ultimately decided against hiking Pillsbury to see the Firetower lighting because it wasn’t scheduled until 9 o’clock and would have made a very long night by the time I hiked down the mountain in two hours and drove a half hour over rough roads in pitch black.

Maybe it would have been a nice evening ✨ but it would have been a long very dark hike back – nearly three miles with Military Turnpike closed at Jessup River Road due to damage from the 2019 storm. Plus it’s such a rough road and Big Red’s suspension doesn’t do much to smooth out the bumps these days.

Instead I spent the bulk of the weekend around camp ⛺, with on Sunday doing a ten mile hike down Mud Pond Road and then the gated part that’s just a snowmobile trail. Some bird 🐦 hunters around, I saw a black bear 🐻 and some cubs along the road in a tree but it was pretty quiet. Not a lot of good views around the road but not a bad place for watching nature it was very quiet.

All weekend was remarkably hot ☀ which isn’t surprising as this campsite has minimal shade midday. Good for solar not good for staying cool. No rain there but just to the east it looks like there was a lot of thunderstorms ⛈. I reinflated my tube ⭕ which is fully patched now but did not end up driving down to the Jessup River to float because today I was sure by the time I got there it would be a roaring thunderstorms and yesterday after all those clams and shrimp in the beer I didn’t think driving was a good idea plus it gets dark so early this time of year. It’s only 8:30 and pitch black with the clouds tonight.

So instead I spent a lot of time reading 📖 a book about the algorithms and hardware that make up modern computers and then a lot of study from YouTube and various websites about Saga GIS and GRASS GIS and how I can integrate those advanced algorithms into my R Programming projects. Also there was just a lot of miscellaneous things I got reading about – and various work emails 📧 and projects needing addressing.

I didn’t think I would have a fire 🔥 tonight with the earlier forecast that called for rain ☔ but all we got was humidity. Had to get more firewood from the woods and didn’t save paper to start the fire. Last night was the best one when it came the stars ✨ though the moonlight made them fainter. Friday night I did a Zoom call with John Wolcott and Friends after which I waited until late then had a rip roaring fire until eleven or so. Had a lot of burnables to oxidize.

It’s been a fairly quiet weekend ☺️ but truth be told I really don’t enjoy camping like I once did. The beer 🍻 and unhealthy camp food isn’t as much fun as when I was younger. Plus the time goes by so fast and I have fewer and fewer new places to explore. I’ve camped at this same site at Perkins Clearing many times before.

As through November all weekends will be working weekends 🍂🍁 I may be back up here in three or four weekends to camp where I have cell service 📱 and remote work 💻. Maybe closer to Mason Lake so I can paddle. 🛶 In retrospect, if I had thought about it more I would have kayak that lake to see the Snowy Mountain Fire Tower on the night it was lit.

But tomorrow looks quite wet, 💦 so I will probably take camp down early, and head home early. Though maybe not a wash out. I was sure this afternoon and evening was going to a soaker and was going to head home today but that would have been a mistake – most of the day was nice but so humid. ☀