Good evening! Mostly clear and 33 degrees at Moscow Hill Camping Area in Brookfield. Calm wind as we are tucked down in the valley. Smoke is going straight up from the fire. Temperatures will drop below freezing at around 7 pm. ☃️

Beautiful evening, mild for late December but the ground is still fairly frozen. ⛺ That said I’m sure these campsites have a thick pack of gravel because they’re trampled by horses 🐴 and heavy horse trailers and diesel pickup trucks all summer long. These sites have those nice little pavilions that the DEC has at a number of state forests in Central and Western New York. 🏡 They’re perfect for handing up lights and cooking and preparing food under. 🍲 I wish they had them up at Cherry Ridge 🍒 but only at the horse camp 🐴.

I was originally planning on going up to Cherry Ridge 🍒 but the road was icy as it’s plowed but not sanded or salted beyond the seasonal use only. I probably would have been fine going up it but there is that one steep section towards the top so I decided against it in favor of Moscow Hill horse camp. 🐴 The riding season is done for the year and while it’s right off of the county highway, there is very little traffic nearby, certainly far less than NY 8. I think I made a good choice camping here and I forgot how nice the pavilions are. Plus being only fifteen minutes away from Shurburne it made for a nice drive down there to visit the Rogers Environmental Education Center. 🐸 No cellphone here but I kind of enjoy the solitude. 📱

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 26 degrees at 4am. Nine degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around December 4th. Light and variable wind. In 2018, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 26 degrees. The record low of -18 occurred back in 1933.

Madison County certainly is a brown and gray as I noted earlier. But that’s winter and that how the land is. So many neat old farm houses and real rough cut farms that are super muddy after it being relatively mild. 🐮 Lots of run down trailers, modular homes and even a few shed to homes. Not too many off grinders although I bet in the future – especially with new homes you’ll see more of that, especially on dirt roads without electric lines. 🔌

While I didn’t grow up in a trailer or a farm 🚜 I’ve always loved the gritty rural life. 😍 The piles of junk and manure. 🔧 The goats 🐐 tied to the tree, the homesteaders processing their own deer and hogs 🐖. They call it poverty or ignorant rednecks but those people are a lot smarter and privledged than I. Someday I’ll own an off grid cabin 🏡 and do a little homesteading myself but I’ll never be a true country boy like those who were raised the life in a place like Southern Madison County. Sure, a lot of my neighbors growing up raised pigs and cows, llved in trailers or modular homes and even burned their own trash 🔥 but I grew up in an ordinary house in the country to college educated 🎓 parents. They had goats and chickens 🐔 buy were no means real country boys.

Tonight will have a with 15% illuminated with the moon setting at 6:57 pm. It is definitely a pretty beautiful little moon. The is on Wednesday night with mostly cloudy skies. The is on Wednesday night. The sun will rise at 7:31 am with the first light at 6:59 am, which is 16 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 14 hours and 56 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 29 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will rain likely, mainly after 4pm. Cloudy 🌧, with a high of 37 degrees at 1pm. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 13th. Calm wind. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 50 degrees. The record high of 71 was set in 1984. 6 inches of snow fell back in 1915.❄

Tomorrow morning I’m taking down camp ⛺ and heading to Glimmerglass State Park before the rain ☔. As it is a fairly mild night, 🌃 I decided to not bother with the tent – I’ll be plenty warm once I get snuggled under the covers in my truck bed. I do like the warmth of the hot tent but it is a lot more work to set up and take down. If I were staying multiple nights or if it was colder I’d definitely had considered the tent.

In four weeks on January 25 the sun will be setting at 5:05 pm,🌄 which is 29 minutes and 57 seconds later then today. In 2019 on that day, we had partly sunny, snow showers and temperatures between 35 and 15 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 31 and 14 degrees. The record high of 61 degrees was set back in 1938.

Looking ahead, Winnie the Pooh Day 🍯 is in 3 weeks, 5 PM Sunset 🌆 is in 4 weeks, February 🌧 is in 5 weeks, Average High is 50 🌸 is in 3 months, Average High is 60 🌼 is in 16 weeks, Average High is 70 🐮 is in 20 weeks, Memorial Day Weekend Starts 🏕️ is in 21 weeks, and Summer ️⛱️ is in 25 weeks.