I planning on taking a road trip next summer to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Northern Wisconsin. And ultimately visit the “Sand County” , Aldo Leopold Shack and Farm in Wisconsin and the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, after spending sometime exploring in the UP after crossing the Mighty Mac Bridge, hopefully not in bad weather. None of those places are necessarily the highlight of the trip, but I’m giving them as well known examples so you can plot them on your mental map.
Honestly, I get very little pleasure out of visiting “well known” tourist places. It’s like my deep aversion to both the High Peaks of Adirondacks and the St. Regis Canoe Area. Yeah, I admit both places exist, and I may have once gone there, but it’s not exactly a place I strive to visit as much pass through. Such places are fine, good for the official tourist bureau post cards. And maybe the tourists in their SUVs.
I’ve been considering for some time doing trips out west, and people will argue that UP and Northern Wisconsin aren’t the west. Which I don’t disagree with based on map, but it’s further west then I’ve been to before. I thought about taking an airplane and renting a car, but for the UP isn’t not that far to drive from Albany, especially if I spend an overnight in a state forest in Chautaqua County, NY. Only 7 hour drive from there to Huron National Forest in Northern Michigan. Then the next day I could head up to the UP.
The truth is the places I am most interested in exploring aren’t well documented in National Tourist Bureau brochures, but are more off the beaten track, mostly known to locals and those who have been there in the past. I have a real aversion to National Parks, and parks more generally, though I will stop at a National Park or some well-known landmark if it’s not far out of the way and too not expensive if only to snap a photo or two and say, see I went there, and give people a frame of reference of where I was in my travels.
When I mentioned to people last week that I was thinking of taking at trip out west, the first reaction I got was, oh, I bet you would like Utah. They have some good National Parks there. Aren’t you excited about the possibilities of visiting Byrce Canyon or Zion National Park? Those were the same kind of people who were sure I would enjoy the Blue Ridge Parkway and Shenandoah National Park. Both were fine, I did part of the Blue Ridge Parkway twice, and it was fine, but I got to say neither one was particularly appealing even if it made for some nice photos. Too developed, too unnatural and unwild for my tastes.
Truth is I like to visit places that are remote and do not cater much for tourists. I’d rather be driving winding mountain roads, camping along little dirt roads in the back country, a long ways from anywhere else. Visiting “known-by-few nationally” landmarks that are scenic and wild but don’t get many tourists at all outside of locals. Deep, vast forest lands, remote country, in the sense they don’t involve parking lots full of cars and concession stands or mowed lawns. Places that when you tell people you want to visit – they respond with a blank stare – and ask why? Is there anything even worth visiting there? Places that are just a blank spot on the map.
I’ve also been thinking about taking a trip out to badlands of Western South Dakota and also the Ozarks of Arkansas and Missouri for a few years now. Those places also evoke a lot of confusion. Moreover, I am not looking per se to stay in motels or developed campgrounds there either, but to explore the back country of National Forests and other public lands there, away from the developed recreational areas. I’m not so against staying in a campground or motel when necessary for a night or two, or even visiting a well known park, but I’m hardly enthusiastic about the possibility either. Even if I had to take an aeroplane due to reasons of time, I’d probably pack a hammock for forest camping and rent a car so I could get away from the cities and developed areas as quickly as possible.
I am sure there are similar opportunities like that in the Rockies and even Arizona and Utah. Actually I know there is, they are called BLM and Forest Service lands. And there is a whole activity called boondocking. But despite the vastness of Western US, I am also aware how popular many parts of the West, and how unaccessible many other parts of West are once you get far away enough from the popular tourist destinations and big cities of West that bring out the crowds to back country. Plus one of goals of these trips is to find out where I want to build or buy my off-grid cabin – with the high housing costs and limited privately-owned rural land in West – and fire danger I’m really kind of turned off by the West. The Western US is vast but the population overwhelmingly lives in cities and their suburbs, at even higher rates then much of the rest of the United States.
While I’ve been talking about it for some time – vague notions of visiting the Ozarks or South Dakota or maybe Idaho – truth is that I haven’t really made any serious plans on a route or destination. It’s a bit hard to plan such things when you want to avoid motels, campgrounds and popular tourist traps like the National Parks. Aeroplanes are expensive, as is renting a car, plus it seems werid to spend so much money if you’re not planning to visit the aforementioned places already photographed a million times and widely known. And most I’m lazy.
With a car or truck, and planning to spend much of your time in back country, you have a lot more flexibility then having to follow a train, bus, or aeroplane schedule, and you can bring much more gear and supplies. The only thing you have to rush against is daylight and the end of the trip.
There is a lot more to figure out. What good places to visit in the UP and Northern Wisconsin? It would be so easy to take an airplanes out Utah and go to designated viewing spots and stay at the designated motel at Zion National Park or wherever the tourist bureau insists I should visit, but I’m honestly not interested in that kind of trip, as I think you miss a lot by following a set agenda and visiting places that you can just watch a video from home on the internet. While scenic, my impression of Shenandoah National Park was boring and frankly quite pedestrian. And there is a lot more of America to see beyond what the experts think you visit.
A 53-week long year in 2026 📆
Most years have 52 weeks.
Next year (2026) has 53 weeks rather then 52 weeks. The last time that happened was in 2020.
2005, 2009, 2015, 2020, 2026, 2032 are 53 week years.
This only happens on years when New Years Day is a Thursday, except when it’s a leap year and New Years Day is on a Wednesday.
Addicted to dill weed 🌾
My mom bought me a jar of dill weed to use in rye bread. And now I’m hooked and not just in rye bread. I had to buy a bigger jar.
Now I get how get addicts get started. It’s always that sample they give you for a little taste.
I guess I can ride my bike into work today, I tell myself. 🥶🚲
It is snowing out again, yes, but the wind isn’t roaring around like they threatened it would be today. Of course the evening commute back downtown on the bike will suck, but whatever, worse comes to worse, I leave my bike in office overnight and catch the shuttle or a city bus downtown and pick my bike up in the morning when I drive Big Red one last time to work.
Snowing out this morning, ☃️ just the light stuff but the wind has been relatively quiet. Maybe it will change by the time it’s to go, 🌬️ but whatever I think I can make it work if I bundle up. 🚴 I just love that feeling when I ride in, how refreshed and energetic I feel when I make it into the office. Too much snow to ride the bike path, so it’s a Corning’s Hill kind of morning. It was it is, and it’s still early enough that if I must I go back to busing it fine. 🚍 I kind of feel bad for the shuttle driver, especially if I’m the only one riding to make him have to run that last trip of the day for just me, as the other driver is on vacation, so he has to stay late to run the bus. Not a lot of shuttle 🚀 riders this last week of the year as many people are off for the holidays. I might have taken more time off but I want to maximize the time I roll over into the new year for travels in my new rig. 🗓️
Going only to work until 1 PM on New Years Eve tomorrow, 🎉 and then run to Walmart and get any last minute supplies before Red’s retirement. Go easy on the bumps so I won’t break the frame before retirement. Then maybe go for a little drive out in country until dusk when I’ll go out and meet the folks for New Years Eve Fondue and park Big Red for the winter out there in the pasture. 🛻 🐐 I’ll take off the license plates on New Years Day, return them to DMV on Monday and call my insurance and let them know the plates have been surrendered and I would like a prorated check for the remaining three months left on my policy. I decided I will just completely drop my registration with the DMV rather then suspend it, as it’s ultimately the dealer who pays for registration costs when you buy a new car, 📄 even if they pretend to pass it along to the buyer with some fictional fee.
But if there is anything I’ve learned in my research about car shopping is all fees and dealer incentives are pure fiction, the only thing you care about is the out the door price, 💰 the one you either cut a check for or get a loan against. Dealers know about money and making numbers work for themselves. I’m the knuckle-drag hick who burns his garbage, who just cares about how money I have to hand 🤝 said dealer whether it be in a town that smells like cow shit or elsewise. 🐮 I have a feeling dairy men buy a lot of trucks like the one I’m looking at. Indeed, I could get $500 farm bureau cash if I was a member on many of trucks I was looking at. I should send the farm bureau a $100 associate membership, lol. It is worth your time to get information on dealer financing once you get an agreed upon price, though if I were to go that route I would definately check out the fine print including prepayment penalities, compare it to interest I get on my investments, and probably not go for it but I’ll keep an open mind – as sometimes dealer will offer a bigger discount if you finance through them. 📄 Getting smart I guess, got to rebuild those brain cells after all the weed and burn plastic fumes. 🤓
Most of yesterday was a pretty ordinary day, 🏢 work, work, work. It was pretty damn quiet in the office, a few things to supervise and approve, still waiting on some issues to be fixed with the database from the programming department. The smart programmer people who really know how to write code and can make sense of the spaghetti C code – unlike the dope smoking, garbage burning, redneck political scientist. I ended up playing with R and updating my GitHub with a few new scripts I’ve written in recent months for maps and diagrams. 💾 The morning bus was a bit early getting downtown, I ended up drifting into thought 💭 pacing around, I looked up and realize I might have missed the shuttle 🚀 to suburban office building when I saw the time, but Ray the shuttle driver was running a bit late due to the weather. Walking the laps in Empire Plaza 👣 after work, there was a bum pushing a wheel chair full of his belongings, but the bums are were all friendly, the local bus on time, and I read some more e-books 📙 and before I knew it was I home, besides the delay around the stop due to multiple cops cars flashing helping a stuck motorist.
All I can think is some politician’s wife must have got cut off at the light and slid into a snow bank at Delaware and Cherry in the snow squall last night. ☃️ There was three cops pushing a a stuck Honda out of a snow bank and directing traffic. 👮 No damage to the car, just high centered on the snow bank. With all the cop cars and lights I thought it was a fire or a bad accident. 🚨 Literally all I could see was them stopping traffic to push a Honda out of the snow bank, and then the driver left, car undamaged. 🤷♂️ Must have just been the most exciting event in Delmar for all of the year. That and apparently the power failure from overload 🔌 last summer when I was out in Finger Lakes or somewhere else smoking dope and burning shit. 🔥 I was just so amused by the commotion, especially when I saw how undamaged the car appeared from the crash. Sigh.
I got to figure out what my reading list will look like for January and get a bunch of books out on Hoopla 📚 before the month and year draws to a close. Especially not having a vehicle after Wednesday, having lots of good reads is important. I want to get a book on car buying, as while I’ve learned a lot from YouTube, information is powerful. I continue studying trucks 🚚 and car buying all month before I start climbing in them in February. March I will start by reaching out to dealerships in Syracuse, Glens Falls, Oneonta, Newburgh to see what they can offer in out the door prices on trucks I like, and then work my way inwards to closer dealers on a price and model match basis. It’s worth it to take a Greyhound, train or bus – or asking for a ride from the friend – if it’s the rig I want at a price I’m comfortable with paying. But first I got to figure out the different SuperDuty packages, I get regular cab long bed 4×4, but beyond that, they really are a dizzying mixture 😵 of packages and equipment and widely verying prices. I also want to find other things to read about and fun distractions, as at times the process is frustrating 😤 and confusing. But time is on my side, as it’s stupid to pay thousands more for a truck I hate and quickly want to discard, just because I want to get up in the woods a few weeks sooner to smoke weed, amd illegally burn garbage so I don’t have to wash and recycle plastic. ♻️ Still need to call Meadowbrook Dairy 🐮 to see if they can start supplying me with milk in glass so I can avoid the trash as those milk jugs have long been one of the biggest portions of my garbage. I like cow and hog people, probably because they work the land, 🚜 and typically have lots of fires. Rotted hog shit grows good weed too, I’m told.🐖💩🌿Gotta save money so I can some day have my own hogs, grow weed, have land for that downwind burn barrel ventalated with my freedom stick. 🔫 But first I need a new big ass truck.
Opinion | I Loved My Grandmother. But She Was a Nazi. – The New York Times
My grandparents were Nazis. It took me until recently to be able to say — or write — this. I used to think of and refer to them as “ordinary Germans,” as if that was a distinct and morally neutral category. But like many “ordinary Germans,” they were members of the Nazi Party — they joined in 1937.
My grandmother, who lived to be almost 100, was not, as I knew her, xenophobic or anti-Semitic; she did not seem temperamentally suited to hate. Understanding why and how this woman I knew and loved was swept up in a movement that became synonymous with evil has been, for me, a lifelong question.
1 year with a 2024 6.8 F250
Makes some interesting points.
