Starting to finally get nice out this morning. Going to be a beautiful day.

Good morning! Happy Sunday from Vacationland 2023. Partly sunny and 60 degrees at the Finger Lakes National Forest. There is a north-northwest breeze at 8 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 57 degrees. Much cooler than before the front came through.

Woke up pretty early this morning, thinking that it would be a nice morning 🌅 and I could get up, use the bucket shitter 🚽 and they have coffee ☕. I even thought 💭 about taking a ride over to Searsburg Road and watching the sun rise. They promised it would be a beautiful day, and it probably will be but it didn’t clear out by nine o’clock last night as promised by the weathermen. ☁️ I looked to the sky this morning and all I saw was clouds. Maybe I should have pooped 💩 and gone back to bed but instead it was apple banana pancakes 🥞 using the remainder of the pancake mix I bought last winter mixed with whole oatmeal, fried apples and mashed bananas. Through
In chia seeds 🌱 for an extra health punch 👊.

Going forward I won’t buy any more pancake mix but instead use that whole grain oatmeal with water and bananas. 🥞 I like the hardy more fiber rich oatmeal over the bleached flour, sugar and chemicals of Aunt Jamina’s pancake mix. Less garbage and cost too by using just simple oatmeal and bananas. Really don’t need to waste money 💵 on packaging to burn. Likewise I’m using real silverware and dishes now while camping as paper plates, and plastic silverware have gotten so expensive with inflation plus who wants to burn all that toxic plastic trash? 🗑

Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 71 degrees at 3pm. 13 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around September 24th. Maximum dew point of 57 at 8am. Northwest wind around 9 mph. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 82 degrees. The record high of 100 was set in 1933. Cool but getting sunny for sure.

Today I have a busy agenda planned. 📜 But it’s going to be a great one. I plan to get a fairly early start, bike most of the Cayuta Valley Rail Trail. 🚲 Then swim at the Watkins Glen Pool, get ice cream at Glen Dairy Bar 🍦, ride along Rock Cabin Road, watch the sunset 🌇 on Seneca Lake. Then back to camp for some hammock time before bed. Greased my chain 🔗 up well on my bike this morning, cleaned off the mud, and set up the GoPro mount on my bike 📸 so I can do some video today riding for the blog and YouTube and other social media. 📹

Despite a fairly soggy day yesterday, 🌧️ I’ve been feeling great without the alcohol and calories 🤰 of years past, choosing healthier nutrient dense meals 🍴 and whole fruits and vegetables 🫑up here at camp. ⛺ A healthy diet I believe really does improve ones mental health. ☺ While I’m not one to blame the chemicals in processed foods – most of them are relative safe, 🧪⚗️ most of them mask crap ingredients that are rich in low quality fats and sugars while providing not much vitamins, fiber or protein. Plus being skinner I feel great though I certainly have been stuffing myself this weekend 🍑 but with higher quality whole foods.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 1:14 pm with sun having an altitude of 66° from the due south horizon (-4.7° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 2.7 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 7:51 pm with the sun in the west-northwest (290°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-northwest (297°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 8:31 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 14 seconds with dusk around 9:02 pm, which is one minute and 5 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Full 🌝 Moon in the southeast (146°) at an altitude of 11° from the horizon, 228,672 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 9:43 pm. At sunset, look for mostly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 64 degrees. The dew point will be 53 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 35 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 6 seconds over yesterday.

Yesterday became a wet day, though later then expected. Rochester got the rain early, we got it later in the Finger Lakes. 🌧️ Breakfast was eggs with tomatoes, onions and peppers with a side of old breakfast sausage I bought last winter. Rode Blackie 🚵 to the top of Hector Backbone though I admit I dismounted and pushed the bicycle part of the way. I had lower gears ⚙ to drop it down to but I wasn’t feeling motivated. At the top by Blueberry Hill Campground 🫐 it started to rain – it was already one o’clock before that happened. More of a passing shower, waited waited it out under a tree. 🌳 Rode around the campground, the fee is now up to $15 a night though I can’t imagine camping so packed in with others. I like my fires 🔥 and music 🎶, I would be a nuisance if I had to camp around others. 🤫

Tried to get good cell service up there 📶 without much luck. A few bars but it was slow, possibly due to the weather. ⛈ Rode down the backbone to Potomac Road, much more fun going down then over to Potomac Ponds which I started back, started slinging mud 🐽 and decided to turn back when the trail got too muddy. I rode down old Chicken Co-op Road as my GPS calls it 🗺 and the sky just opened up. ⛈️ I wanted to see my favorite old campsite and see how the mud wallow was holding up after all the stone I dumped in it last year. Still quite muddy. Glad I got the site I like on Potomac instead. I headed back to camp, I didn’t mind being soaked as it was still quite warm. 🧅 Fried up another delicious 😋 Vadella onion on the griddle – sliced it into rings, put it on a cast iron skillet and added a little MSG to really make it pop. Dessert was red kidney beans with some maple syrup 🍁 and a beer 🍻. Had two beers yesterday between lunch and dinner which is my limit though the first day I had one and maybe none today.

As the front came through the rain picked up and the temperature dropped. 🌡️ I read for a while 📖 and listened to a podcast 📻 from Focus on Albany with Cynthia Pooler interviewing Leon Van Dyke. Interesting history about how the Democratic 🐴 machine worked and the $5 votes 🗳 and the fear people had about ever speaking up about the machine. Found out John Wolcott is returning home Monday for hospice care, 🧑‍⚕️ but he’s still pretty much in his final hours, hope to visit him at least one more time when I get back from vacation. Had some great interviews with John Wolcott and Leon Van Dyke over the years though I wish we had started years earlier 🎤 before John lost much of his memory and became so frail after getting bit by a tick and collapsing one day in his bathtub 🛁. Tick born illnesses are no joke. 🐜

After a while with the wind and the rain ☔ I started to get chilled through at camp and decided I needed to take off my wet clothes. 👚 I got jeans and a hoodie on, bedded down in my truck with the remainder of the Boggleheads investing book 📙 which I finally finished off before putting on a different podcast about the history of Mad Magazine before nodding off. 🤡 Got some shut eye 👁️ for a few hours before dinner time.

Dinner was more salmon 🐠 with delicious pearl onions, mini red potato 🥔 , sweet corn and fried slices of tomato 🍅 – the second half of the big juicy one I got at the farm stand. I still have a full tomato left, it’s like heaven. Eating good. Rode up to Searsburg Road 🚲 hoping to catch the sunset but it was still gray last night but I do have good reception 📶 there. Maybe tonight though I think I’ll watch the sunset tonight from Seneca Lake 🌇. Decided I wanted to get some more miles in before bed 🛏 after a fairly lazy day 😴 so around dusk started over to Foster Pond on the bicycle but turned back as drizzle started. 🔙 Had a small campfire 🔥 at warm myself and retired to bed around ten 🔟. Early by vacation standards when it’s not really dark out until around nine.

Tonight will have increasing clouds ☁, with a low of 56 degrees at 5am. Six degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around September 6th. Maximum dew point of 54 at 6pm. Northwest wind around 6 mph becoming southwest in the evening. In 2022, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 60 degrees. The record low of 49 occurred back in 2021.

One month 📅 from now will the Average High Falls To 79 ️Degrees ⛱️️️ when the sun will be setting at 7:47 pm with dusk at 8:14 pm. As they say, all good things must come to an end, autumn leaves must fall. But first, summer vacation! 🏖