Good afternoon! Happy Saturday from the Finger Lakes.

First full day of vacation, though I got a pretty early start on Friday and was actually setting up camp by noontime on Friday, followed by light work by email and some drinking.

Mostly sunny and 77 degrees at the Aunt Sarah’s Falls. ☀ There is a northwest breeze at 10 mph. 🍃 with gusts up to 20 mph 💨💨💨. The dew point is 58 degrees.

Today I’m out hiking a bit of the Catharine Valley Rail Trail 🚂 and Aunt Sarah’s Falls and then I’m going to head over to Watkins Glen State Park to swim 🏊‍♂️ for a while. The park is usually crowded on the weekend but I have my place where I like to park and hopefully the full pool will be open. 🍧 Then I’ll get ice cream and sit down by Seneca Lake for a while then head back to camp.

While it’s not super dry in the Finger Lakes where I am 💧there isn’t a lot of water going over Aunt Sarah’s Falls. The birds 🐦 are fairly ordinary on Catharine Creek Marsh today, a lot of bicyclist 🚴 on the rail trail. Not a race weekend 🏎 but still pretty busy down in the village today.

This year cutting back a little bit on day trips due to price of gas and those hills where I swear I see the needle drop as a climb them. ⛽Figure alternate each day between camp and heading to town, works well with the ice. Trying to keep my fuel bill under $250 for vacation but still get out and do things but not feel rushed.

I actually got good gas mileage coming out to the Finger Lakes. 🛻That’s despite having the kayak 🛶 on the roof of my Big Jacked Up truck. I tried to avoid using passing gear climbing the hills, traffic was light on a Friday morning and I climbed the hills at 35-45 mph and took my foot off the gas as soon as I reached the summit. Even on Interstate 88 I rarely hit 60 but to be fair the road was mostly under construction and posted at 55.

That said, on Friday it was a nice leisurely drive out to the Finger Lakes. 🚜 I like seeing all the farms and small towns, the run down and somewhat disorderly homesteads along the hills and the deep valleys. I’m not a big fan of NY 206 and NY 78 especially near Ithaca due to the traffic and hot to trot drivers but on a Friday morning unlike a weekend it was very quiet. I got to camp around noon time Friday.

Spent most of Friday afternoon setting up camp. ⛺ I figured if I am going to stay here all nine nights might as well get it set up nice. Ended up camping at my usual site on Chicken Co-op Road 🐔 (as my GPS calls it), which was good as I need cell service 📱 so I can text and email 📧 for work. Kind of a working vacation scheduled this year. Busy year with all those political campaigns going on.

The mud is wallow into this campsite is getting deep 🐽 so I trenched it out, draining it out and then finding rocks and mud in the woods to fill it in. It’s still kind of soft and a mess but I think with the dry weather and the water mostly drained end ditched off things should improve over the week. I figure I can keep adding rock to fill it in more as needed.