Night one late November camping on Piseco Powley Road. ⛺ I wasn’t really sure until midday where I was going to go but I kind of tired of East Branch Sacandaga River with all the road noise and all the time I’ve spent up in the general area around Spectulator. While it was nice up there this summer I wanted a change of pace and I hadn’t spent any time on the southern end of Powley Road as it was closed all summer. Too cold though

It was kind of a rather cloudy day, damp to with a little drizzle. 💧 I certainly didn’t rush up here by any means. All of the wood up here was super wet but after a bit of a struggle to get the fire going, stacking logs along the outside of the fire to help it go I ended up a with a pretty nice fire 🔥 but the first few hours were smokey until the wood dried. In the wilderness though the air pollution doesn’t matter much.

Rained for a while this evening after 9 pm ☔ but fortunately I set up a tarp and I expect all night to be above freezing and I’m not that far from the asphalt road. Tomorrow night may drop below freezing but no precipitation is expected then and it will be in the mid 40s both days. Normally I won’t camp here in the winter due to the risk of lake effect snow 🌨 but despite the showed tonight into tomorrow morning the snow risk is low.

Leaving home I forgot my day pack and turned into one of those schizophrenic suburbanites neighborhoods, 🏘️ and had to around a couple of times to figure out how to get home, but ultimately I escaped, got home and grabbed my day pack. Not totally sure where I’m going hiking, but I’m leaning towards just hiking up to House Pond and the Potholers tomorrow, and then poke around the Schoharie Crossing in Fort Hunter on Sunday. I kind of don’t want to walk too far back in the woods and spook someone’s deer 🦌 they are hunting, although Northern Zone hunting is all but done at this point.

Running 🏃 a bit later than I hoped, I decided to take the Thruway to Schenectady. Very fast and easy now that the toll booths are removed without the tricky merges. But now you have to be careful to slow down to 55 mph when you get on interstate 890 as there is no troll booths to slow you down. I’ll have to check my EZ-Pass when I get home to make sure I’m still being billed the passenger car rate despite the lift kit and camper shell on my truck. I don’t think they measure height with the new system or count the truck cap but I’m certainly over 7 1/2 foot although maybe bit below it with the cab of my truck.

Price Chopper in Johnstown was pretty empty 🏪 and I was as able to get everything I needed including sleeping pills 😴 for when I get home on Sunday evening. This time I got a big bottle so hopefully they’ll last most of the winter. Definitely sleep a lot better after one of them 💊, less waking up in the middle of the night although lately it’s not been so bad. After shopping 🛒 I used some of the hand sanitizer 🖐🏻 I bought the other day at Walmart, it’s almost as bad as the NYS Clean stuff they have everywhere this day. I’m glad I have it though as I think this pandemic only going to get worse. 😷