Balsam Swamp is a sprawling state forest that stretches almost 5.5 miles east-west across 4 towns. The area is very rural, and the landscape surrounding the State Forest is predominantly forested. Balsam Swamp State Forest is comprised of a mix of native hardwood forests, hemlock swamps, and conifer plantations. There are no designated recreational trails on the forest, but there is ample opportunity for self-guided day hikes to explore the diversity of habitats represented on this State Forest. Additionally, the western section of Balsam Swamp State Forest is adjacent to Five Streams State Forest to the south.
The main attraction of this forest is Balsam Pond. The impoundment is approximately 152 acres and is a popular destination for fishing and paddle boat sports. Balsam Pond is a warm water fishery that contains a mix of largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, chain pickerel, yellow perch, brown bullhead and sunfish. Tiger muskellunge have been stocked in the past with the last stocking occurring in 1995. However, there have been very few reports of anglers catching any of the adult tiger muskies. A shallow gravel boat launch is suitable for launching small fishing boats.
A small rustic camp ground is also located at Balsam Pond. Camping spaces are available at no cost on a first-come, first-serve basis and there is no running water or electricity. A fire ring, outhouse, and picnic table are provided for each camping space. A sign on Balsam-Tyler Road in Pharsalia designates the entrance to the boat launch and camping facility. This is a carry-in carry-out facility. Please do not litter.
Winters back but I’m overcoming my shock 🤯 and getting used to it. Doesn’t feel so cold though I could feel it on my face during the morning walk.
Sunny and 13 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌞 Calm wind. There are 5 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at around 1 pm. 🌡️
Out bright and early 🌄 trying to get my steps 👣 in as I kind of fell behind over the weekend. Yesterday did 11k but I don’t want to slide back any more especially with the colder weather upon us.
Last night 🌃 before the evening walk 🚶, cleaned the snow off Big Red 🛻 so the solar panel can top off things. Tomorrow during the remote work day going to work from the laundromat as I do my clothes so I want the sun ☀ to finish cleaning up my truck today and have the battery 🔋 topped off.
Thursday I am getting Big Red State Inspected 🛻 🔍, I’m sure it’s old but mostly legal. And I have to get things for the Christmas 🤶 Party at work on Friday. First though, tomorrow is the annual work at home 🏡 day, a reminder of the world that once was when I could work from the Adirondacks.
Friday is the Christmas Party 🎉 at work and then I took off the following week through Christmas. ⛺ I want to get out of town for a few nights but not sure how far I go – depends on how much snow we get this weekend.
Next week is starting to look cold ❄️ and who knows if I will have jury duty, but if I do so be it. I’m am going to loose the time if I don’t take it and I need to work the last week in the office. But I hope to get away for a few days, and also continue my study with freeCodeCamp and work on a new blog theme.
That is with a blanket of snow. I guess it came yesterday, but I was very lazy and didn’t get out at all yesterday, just looking out my window in despair at all the cold and snow coming down. And we might get even more come the weekend. Maybe a big one. I should think about getting out my skis, as I may take next week off and might camp for a few days and do skiing. Depends on how much snow.
Clouds and 26 degrees in Delmar. 🌧 There is a north breeze at 8 mph. 🍃. There are 5 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at around noontime. 🌡️
Yesterday, I should have gone out to Five Rivers 🌨 but it started to snow early and I had very little interest in going out. Everything just seemed so cold, after spending three cold days in the Adirondacks. 🏕 It was nice getting out of town but it was very cold, especially in the morning. I do wish I had hot tented rather then sleeping in the unheated truck camper. 🛌 Under the covers was fine but the cold in the morning, was well cold. ❄️
Came home on Saturday, 🌤 in part because I was sunburnt with the cold and I needed to head into town at any rate to check if I had to report to jury duty this week. 👩⚖️ Fortunately, no. I probably could have camped another night, but I didn’t want to drive home in the snow, which had already started by the time I got up on Sunday morning. ⛺
It was a nice weekend up north ⛄ but it was cold. Not windy, which helped but the mercury dropped down to the single digits both nights. And everything was wet, then icy after the mercury dropped. The wood was wet, leading to smokey campfires. 🔥 If I was smart I would have pitched a tent and hot tented but I left my carbon monoxide detector home and I didn’t want to deal with setting up and taking down a tent for two days.
Finished up my freeCodeCamp Responsive HTML Class 🤖 on Saturday evening and started the plunge into the Javascript and ES6 code. A lot of very useful features in ES6, many things I did not know before. The RegExp section is tedious, and the same old stuff but I guess it’s a good refresher.
Won’t be much snow left anywhere after today, especially with the rain showers, not that there was a lot locally. But also not a lot up north, though most of the roads are closed for the winter. But it will be nice should I decide to head out this weekend. The thing I need to watch for is the risk though of snow come Sunday.
Today. Feels like … October 29th.
Showers likely, mainly after 5pm. Cloudy.
South wind 3 to 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.
and
56 degrees
,
4:23 sunset.
Tonight. Feels like … October 18th.
A chance of showers, mainly before 9pm. Cloudy, then gradually becoming partly cloudy.
Calm wind becoming northwest 5 to 8 mph in the evening. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.
Good morning! What day is it? A Pseudo Friday for Me, of course. ☺
Work weeks go by much faster when you take off Thursday and Friday. Of course the real payback comes January when I am super busy with work.
Cloudy and 53 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁️ There is a south breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 52 degrees. Temperatures will drop below freezing at tomorrow around 11 pm. ☃️
Lots of people out walking 🚶 on this very mild day. Nice start to the day though rain is coming later. Another dark morning to start the walk but getting brighter now. Running a little late but I am hoping if I can shower 🚿 quickly I can still get the express bus 🚍 downtown.
Glad the heat is off and the windows open. 🔳 Fresh air is always nice and there is something about paying for heat that I really despise. Maybe it’s because I don’t control the efficiency of my apartment outside of adding extra sealing to the door but more that I feel like every dollar 💵 I spend on heating is stealing from my future. But I can’t control winter ☃ but I can keep the thermostat down. Do look forward to eventually heating with wood harvested from my own land.
Spectrum sent me yet another ad for cable TV 📺 and internet. I find it hard to believe after all these years they’re still trying to get me as a customer. But these days with low cost unlimited data plans virtually being the norm and smartphones 📱 virtually being able to do everything – plus 5 gig Hotspot for free each month, I can’t imagine getting internet at home, especially living through the pandemic without it.
Got paid yesterday, and listened to Godspell’s Day by day. It’s just one more check, one more buck or thousand odd to go into retirement and investments. It’s been a tough year on the markets, and while I’ve worked to invest more, it’s hard to override the pull of the drop in both the bond and stock markets. 📉 Things will improve some day I tell myself, all the stock and bonds I’ve bought over the years will eventually add up once the markets recover. It is kind of disappointing though to watch the numbers slide in the wrong direction though, as you hope for a better tomorrow.
Need to get my truck inspected fairly soon. 🔍 At least by the end of the month. 🚚 I didn’t want to do it this week as I planned to head out of town. 📞 Maybe I’ll call on Friday, after I find out if I have jury duty next week or not. Of course that in part depends if I head out of town too. Wednesday is a good day for me as I’m working from home, but I don’t know if I can get an appointment that soon.
Continuing to work on the Free Code Camp class. 🖥 Still learning a lot – I think the things I’m learning about the grid model now will greatly improve my productivity when it comes to web 🕸 design. That said, learning isn’t always fun. 😤 Sometimes the class explains things and when it’s time to code I can’t get it to work without multiple tries. Sometimes I just feel plain dumb. Other times I wonder why the class is boring 💤 me with the same old shit I learned years ago. But I get its part of the learning process. The class though is giving me neat ideas 💡 for a new blog theme. I want to learn more from the class before I start writing it but I’m thinking a fresh new blog theme would be of order for the new year.
Definitely leaning towards heading out of town for a few days. ⛺ Thursday and Friday I have off. Not a lot of snow up north or even in Central New York. The thing is I need to plan on being somewhere on Friday that I can check on my jury status for next week 🧑⚖️ and let my employer know and plan what days to take off next week, namely Thursday. I think I’m going to take off the week before Christmas.
The weird shit they sell at the Empire State Plaza Christmas Bazzar 🎁. Every year I have to think how odd that stuff is. The things marketed by crafters to civil servants though is particularly odd. That said I’m not into that whole Christmas thing, I think it’s kind of silly.
Programs that use GDAL as a back-end should be able to natively open .e00 files — for example QGIS, GRASS, SAGA, ogr2ogr, Python’s GeoPandas or R Statistical Programming’s sf package. This is a default built-in driver in GDAL.
If you have GDAL installed (which you may already have if you have any open source GIS software installed), you can also use ogr2ogr to do the conversion. Due to the limitations of Shapefiles, you it is better to convert to GeoPackage, as Arc/Info E00 files can have field names longer than 10-character long Shapefiles.
ogr2ogr output.shp input.e00 # note output comes before input
In the past, gdal didn’t have native E00 support but all recent versions do.
But then things should improve for the days I have off. Rain is holding off for the morning but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to walk in the park at lunch or will be relegated to the Concourse. Probably have to take the local bus home.
For the days I have off it looks decent though I’m not sure what my plans are. Regular season is done up north but there is still some snow around and most of the seasonal roads are closed for the winter. I’d rather wait another week to do any camping in the Southern Zone when things are quieter. Probably take off all of the week before Christmas assuming that I don’t have jury duty. But I guess it doesn’t matter as I’m going to loose the time regardless at the end of the year as it doesn’t roll over.
Today. Feels like …
November 8th.
Rain, mainly after 10am. High near 52. South wind 5 to 8 mph, with gusts as high as 22 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.
and
52 degrees
,
4:23
sunset.
Tonight. Feels like …
September 27th.
Rain. Low around 48. South wind 8 to 10 mph, with gusts as high as 23 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.
and
48 degrees
,
7:10
sunrise.
Wednesday. Feels like …
November 1st.
Rain likely, mainly before 1pm. Cloudy.
South wind around 6 mph becoming light and variable in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.
and
55 degrees
,
4:23
sunset.
Wednesday Night. Feels like …
October 15th.
A chance of showers, mainly before 10pm. Mostly cloudy.
Calm wind becoming northwest around 6 mph after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.
