Green Lakes State Park

Green Lakes State Park is a New York State Park located east of Syracuse in the Town of Manlius. The park is strikingly scenic, and has a “masterpiece” golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones very early in his career. Green Lake itself is perhaps the most studied meromictic lake – one in which layers of water do not mix – in the world. The park preserves the largest stand of old growth forest in Central New York, and Round Lake has been designated as a National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The park is centered on two small lakes, Green Lake and Round Lake, which have an unusual blue-green color. These lakes lie at the base of a gorge that is somewhat longer than a mile in length. The lakes and the gorge are remnants of the ice ages, and exemplify some of the unusual geology of upstate New York.

The park’s area is 1,955 acres, and it logs about 800,000 visitors each year. Nearly half the park’s area is old-growth forest, which includes many very large specimens of tuliptrees, sugar maples, beech, basswood, hemlocks, and white cedars. One particularly impressive grove of trees, lying immediately to the southwest of Round Lake, has been called the Tuliptree Cathedral.

http://nysparks.com/parks/172/details.aspx

September 22, 2018 Night

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Good evening! Happy Autumn. Partly cloudy and 50 degrees in Fayetteville. ⛅ Calm wind. Definitely feels like an autumn evening with a good chill in the air.🍂

Definitely a fantastic sunset tonight here in the Syracuse area. 🌄 Loads of color for sure and I had a great view from Green Lakes State Park overlooking Minoa and Fayetteville. The hills hide most of the development and the bird conservation area is fantastic for viewing wildlife without the crowds. 🐸

Tonight will be partly cloudy ☁, with a low of 42 degrees at 5am. Seven degrees below normal. Light and variable wind. Definitely an autumn night. In 2017, we had partly cloudy skies, clearing in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 53 degrees. The record low of 32 occurred back in 1963.

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous Moon 🌔 with 96% illuminated. The moon will set at 4:59 am. The Harvest Moon 🌕 will be tomorrow with a chance of showers. Shine on harvest moon! The sun will rise at 6:52 am with the first light at 6:23 am, which is one minute and 6 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 11 hours and 52 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes and 55 seconds over last night. Sometime next week we will start having more night than day time. Winter is coming! ❄

Tomorrow will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 66 degrees at 3pm. Three degrees below normal. Maximum dew point of 48 at 4pm. Light and variable wind. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies. The high last year was 85 degrees. Pretty warm for sure that day when I was camping up at Moose River Plains. The record high of 97 was set in 1895.

Looks like a a nice day to do some hiking and enjoying of the day. 😎 It’s no going to be long before sunny days in the mid 60s are a rarity. I have stuff to do tomorrow so I can’t venture out too far but maybe I’ll follow up my evening hike today with a hike along the Erie Canal tomorrow. I also want to spend some time hiking along Onondaga Lake at the county park but I think I’ll hold off for later in the month. Syracuse downtown is pretty overlooking the lake especially when there is some fog on it during a nice crisp morning. 🏃

Yesterday when I was out hiking my digital camera battery went dead, so I don’t have much video and I couldn’t use my telephoto lens. 📷 Still it was a nice evening for a walk. The camera battery is charging now. I should have left it charging all day as the accessory battery in my truck remains really well charged even with the short trips for work due to the ample sun over the past few days hitting the solar panel.

I do miss being home and even more so camping ⛺ but I’m well paid for my work and enjoy the travel. Lots of nice people you meet along the way and it’s providing me with extra money to put away towards my long term savings goals of owning land and an off-grid cabin where I can finally have my own space that is more than just a temporary residence in the wilderness. 🌲 I do have some camping gear in my truck so I might be able to get away for a night but honestly I’m looking forward to those long November nights next to the campfire, using my camp oven and making delicious meals. 🍝 Right now where I’m working I lack a stove, oven and freezer, so while I can cook some things or get take out it’s nothing like a good meal cooked in the wilderness.

I have been working on uploading📤 some of the essays and other interactive content of developed for my blog over the summer and plan to be featuring more of it over the coming weeks. 💻 Last week moving to the new office and attending that wake back in Albany meant I didn’t have a lot of free time to post to the blog but I am good with stuff going forward – it’s more just a matter of getting the final tweaks done before it goes live. 📝

In four weeks on October 20 the sun will be setting at 6:12 pm,🌄 which is 47 minutes and 57 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2017 on that day, we had sunny skies and temperatures between 71 and 46 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 58 and 38 degrees. The record high of 80 degrees was set back in 1965.

Looking ahead, Average High is 60 🍂 is in 3 weeks, Northern Zone Regular Season 🦌 is in 4 weeks, Regular Deer Season in Southern Zone 🦌 is in 8 weeks and Thanksgiving 🦃 is in 2 months.