Kind of a dreary morning but the rain held off besides a very light drizzle as I took down camp at Perkins Clearing, though it’s raining a fair bit harder now that I’m Indian Lake, stopping for a while at the library. Figured check in with the internet before heading up to Horseshoe Lake, as it’s kind of a dreary day and I’m not in a rush to set up camp in the pouring rain, though based on the forecast and the radar I think I’ll likely be driving out of the rain later on today.
I do often wondder if I would have been better to go to West Virigina but both places have been pretty dry and I’m sure the leaves are mostly done in Tucker, WV and I just didn’t want to drive that far and put those kind of stresses on my old truck. It’s driving fine and I think it will be a nice trip up to Northern Adriondacks, which I haven’t been since the pandemic, and this being off-season I should be able to get both good campsites with lots of quiet and because I’m not working my legislative job full time during vacation – though I have other work business to do – I will have more time to ride and kayak. And I’ve been salivating over the brand new, fully open Adirondack Rail Trail. But also seeing Lows Ledge again, along with Bog River Flow. The nice thing too about not going to West Virginia is you don’t loose those two nights overnighting in Pennsylvania and all that time wasted driving. But no run down Pennsylvania homesteads and homes to pass by with those blackened burn barrels and that pungent smell of hillbilly incense. That said, I did like spending the balance of my trip two years ago up in Cannaan Heights, spending half of the days riding and hiking from camp, rather then driving everywhere. Next November, that is 2026, if I go down to West Virigina in my new truck, I’ll probably go straight down there in one day, or maybe not. I think with adaptive cruise control, comfortable seats, a smaller more nimble body, long drives will be much more relaxing and easy. And I won’t have the constant anxiety over potential breakdowns, no matter how low the risk is in reality.
I still think my next truck will be a little Toyota Tacoma with a 6-foot bed. 🛻 The thing though I worry about is having enough room for my extensive camping gear I’ve built up over the years, though admitly I pack too much stuff, and carry around a lot of broken or rarely used junk in my truck. I was thinking though if I don’t have enough space, for the long trips, I could get a little utility trailer to tow extra gear in. One thing for sure I’ll have for my new truck for camping is a cap with Yakima racks so I can bolt my solar panel on it, and run the kayak above that. And get a bike rack to properly carry my bike. Something like that will mean eashy in and out, even on narrow rough roads. I thought a lifted truck would make it easier to get back to rough, remote campsites, but the thing is the sheer size of a full-sized truck is far bigger issue then ground clearance. Plus with all the weight and added stress on the various component with my lifted truck, I am loathed to take it out on any real rough trails for any kind of distance, lest a break shit deep in the wilderness. I really struggle in my mind to see a world after Big Red, though I do see th erust and list of potential problems and even things broken currently are pretty long. At least this morning, I wasn’t gassed by the leaky heater core. Maybe it stopped leaking? I brought extra coolant just for my sanity, along with extra oil. The oil level was fine when I checked before leaving but I might have added a bit of coolant – less then half a cup to bring it up to cold full line. Still I don’t think this is the rig I want to take to Northern MIchigan next year.
It was a nice ride down to Speculator, seeing Moffit Beach and the old CCC Camp, though admittedly there isn’t a lot of color down there either, and it started to get cool mid-afternoon with the breeze picked up, but then I rode back to camp, and was laying back in the hammock, smoking too much pot and drinking too much, listening to the remaining chapters of Edward Abbey’s Hayduke Lives and then Richard Thayler’s Nudge, the sun came out and was quite pleasant. Made a big dinner of rice and lentils, with onions and lots of hot sauce. Burned my mouth but it was good. Had a nice fire for a while, though it clouded up fairly.heading up to Horseshoe Lake, as it’s kind of a dreary day and I’m not in a rush to set up camp in the pouring rain, though based on the forecast and the radar I think I’ll likely be driving out of the rain later on today. Stayed up for a while, as I had popped some caffeine pills before riding down to Speculator for extra sparkle and to be extra cantankerous on the internet . Took down and organized my camping gear, putting away the flags and anything else that could get get wet for easy take down this morning. Did a big pan of eggs and a small thing of coffee, not dillying around too much as I didn’t want to get soaked should the rain actually get serious. That said, I don’t think it’s going to be that wet up north – but I didn’t want to be driving completely soaked in the truck.
I haven’t shaved or changed since Friday, but maybe I’ll do that once camp is set up or come tomorrow morning. 🪒 Honestly, I don’t care about being dirty in the wilderness. Need to get some more water from Horseshoe Lake, as I’ve used my first 3 gallon tank over the weekend, especially as I wanted ot make sure the fire was dead out the two nights I had fires in the woods. It is after all still a burn ban, a high fire risk, though maybe less so now with the rain we are getting. I do expect they will extend the burn ban, though it really only applies to farmers and rural homesteads where people want to burn brush. Truth is it’s probably not advisable as it’s been such a dry year, though with the campfires, and mostly burning pine scraps, it’s been easy to put it out. That said, there were a few times the wind picked up briefly and sent sparks up but it was dark out and I kept an eye on the firebrands to make sure nothing caught, as if it did, I was ready to stomp it out. It wasn’t super dry up by camp, but there was definately some dry grass some distance from the fire pit that could catch.
I often find it hard to be honest with the world around me. While it seems so easy for words to pour on out on the blog, I often are so much more guarded on social media and in person. I am often afraid of being seen as too much of ahayseed or a hillbilly, too conservative or too wild.
The other day in the office meeting, it was mentioned I wanted to be an off-gridder eventually, having that cabin in the wilderness, something simple rustic and more like a hunting cabin than a modern-plastic filled residence. But somehow I had to be so defensive, noting that off-grid houses don’t have to be simple or backwards.
It’s well known I live in a completely dumpy apartment in suburbs, and I don’t own a television or have internet at home beyond my phone – which at this point – at least in my imagination is not that much of a limitation. I’m more then willing to admit that publicly, but the off-grid idea seems too backwards to defend publicly in places beyond the blog where I control all parts of the content and formatting.
I keep telling myself I will get into the dating game, try to meet some nice girls, but I always find myself shying away, despite getting books out of the library on how to be a good dater. I use excuses like I’m busy, I’m up ni the wilderness this weekend, I don’t want to get tied down. But it’s mostly pure fear, the fear of rejection. I know I should brush it off – it’s the American way to write off loses, to throw away and declare bankruptcy. After all, our President is the king of bankruptcy and stiffing his creditors. Garbage dumps everywhere I waiting for your effulence, so just walk away, if the girl doesn’t want you, a million other exist. But I’m scared of commitment.
Maybe I’m just unsure about everything these days, lacking in confidence in my beliefs. Or maybe my ideas are very shallow and all that is worthwhile in this world is plastic and chemical – a series of monthly fees and canned entertainment on the television and internet produced by actors.
You burn plastic, you knuckle-dragging hillbilly, criminal who hates mother earth.
Says the people in the plastic houses with their recycling bins packed full of plastic trash, soon enough to be hauled away in the smoke-bleaching diesel trucks, smashing it in with the tin cans, junk mail, and glass wine bottles. Soon enough to be deposited at the smelly old material recycling facility, with much of the plastics to be only temporarily diverted from the landfill as there is little market for oversees for waste plastics.
Honestly, I don’t care that much as I watch that plastic bottle melt and get all distorted into werid shapes as the bright yellow flames and thickly black smoke floats off into the atmosphere. It’s reality. That said, I don’t exactly enjoy the pollution or smoke, and I do what many recycles don’t do – I try to avoid plastics and packaging to the extent I can. I buy in bulk and shun packaged food as much as possible in favor of basic raw ingredients. Yes, there is inevitably is plastic mulk jugs, yougurt containers and Styrofoam egg containers, and those lightweight plastic bags, but they hardly are what the typical suburban consumer produces.
Outlaw maybe, but then again many backwoods people operate the fringe of legality, mostly living out of the shadow of the law and peering neighbors. But there is so few of such people, that despite all the worries of dioxin and plasticizers, it doesn’t really add up to much and doesn’t impact anyone else. The cowboys and farmers, the rural residents and cabin dwellers. The men of the forest. The letters on the paper board box, charred and blackened and turned back to ash and brown off on the wind.
Now I get not everybody can be a backwoods hillbilly, doing things the old backwards ways frowned upon by urban society, as it cranks out it effulence and makes it’s ego fill full of wokeness. So proud to be washing out those plastic containers, and carefully sorting them out from the other discards on the short or longer trip to the city dump, and growing piles of shit that surround all our cities and rise over the countryside. Still it doesn’t mean I think they’re right.
I was riding my bike to Speculator and a say a pickup truck with a pop-up bed camper in its been. Thoughts of formaldehyde and particle board and lightweight foam bedding popped into my head. Soft, like home. Fake wood trim and particle board covered with vinyl. Toxic soup of chemicals designed to make camping look like a little home on wheels. Not for me! I hate suburbia and have zero interest in taking it in the woods with me.
That’s the one benefit of winter and the holiday season approaching, every store has cranberries and nuts. Plus the oranges and grapefruit are fresh and not the moldy mush you often find as spring approaches.
After the hike and bike 🚲 ride yesterday, I decided to head to bed early and listen to more of Hayduke Lives! No fire 🔥 last night and I got a good night’s sleep.
Pillsbury Mountain ⛰️ was nice yesterday but basically all of the color is gone. I wish I had the low range ⚙️ working on my bike for climbing some of the hills though regardless I still expected to pushing my bike 🚲 up Hardwood Hill because that’s steep. Warsh boarded roads are bad this year being so dry.
Up at six o’clock this morning as I get to bed 🛏️ early plus I like watching the sun rise ☀️ but still it was a pretty dark at first but the electric lights and lantern helped. Coffee ☕ and weed with cranberry and banana pancakes 🥞 were good as was the grapefruit 🍊. I so love grapefruit not just because they are healthy but noting that they are denied too many old 👴🏻 people who need statins due to a lifetime of eating ordinary Americans food. 🍔 It’s funny as a kid, I always thought of grapefruit as a disgusting moldy fruit the old people eat best tossed in the compost pile with the chicken and goat shit to rot away in that smelly old pile of shit. Plus I’ve heard grapefruit contains furanocoumarins that inhibit cytochrome P450 in the liver which is good with that 33.3% THC Just Peachy. 🍑 🐲 Same reason no grapefruit for the old folks with hardened arteries. Good source of fiber too.
Think I’m going to ride out to Speculator today. 🚴 I know I could drive there and Page Hill is going to be a bitch especially without the low range but maybe I’ll bypass the hill by taking Page Road and passing by Moffit Beach. 🏖️ Never been to that beach or Sacandaga Lake but why not visit? Then I want to stop by the village and walk around the Nature Trails 🐦 and sit by Lake Pleasant for a bit. I’ll push the bike up Page Hill on the way back. There is a bit of color left down in the village and along the Sacandaga River. 🍁
but both places have been pretty dry and I’m sure the leaves are mostly done in Tucker, WV and I just didn’t want to drive that far and put those kind of stresses on my old truck. It’s driving fine and I think it will be a nice trip up to Northern Adriondacks, which I haven’t been since the pandemic, 
and this being off-season I should be able to get both good campsites with lots of quiet and because I’m not working my legislative job full time during vacation – though I have other work business to do – I will have more time to ride and kayak. And I’ve been salivating over the brand new, fully open Adirondack Rail Trail. 
But also seeing Lows Ledge again, along with Bog River Flow. The nice thing too about not going to West Virginia is you don’t loose those two nights overnighting in Pennsylvania and all that time wasted driving. But no run down Pennsylvania homesteads and homes to pass by with those blackened burn barrels and that pungent smell of hillbilly incense. That said, I did like spending the balance of my trip two years ago up in Cannaan Heights, spending half of the days riding and hiking from camp, rather then driving everywhere. Next November, that is 2026, if I go down to West Virigina in my new truck, I’ll probably go straight down there in one day, or maybe not. I think with adaptive cruise control, comfortable seats, a smaller more nimble body, long drives will be much more relaxing and easy. And I won’t have the constant anxiety over potential breakdowns, no matter how low the risk is in reality.
I really struggle in my mind to see a world after Big Red, though I do see th erust and list of potential problems and even things broken currently are pretty long. At least this morning, I wasn’t gassed by the leaky heater core. Maybe it stopped leaking? I brought extra coolant just for my sanity, along with extra oil. The oil level was fine when I checked before leaving but I might have added a bit of coolant – less then half a cup to bring it up to cold full line. Still I don’t think this is the rig I want to take to Northern MIchigan next year.
though admittedly there isn’t a lot of color down there either, and it started to get cool mid-afternoon with the breeze picked up, but then I rode back to camp, and was laying back in the hammock, smoking too much pot and drinking too much, listening to the remaining chapters of Edward Abbey’s Hayduke Lives and then Richard Thayler’s Nudge, the sun came out and was quite pleasant. Made a big dinner of rice and lentils, with onions and lots of hot sauce. Burned my mouth but it was good. Had a nice fire for a while, 
though it clouded up fairly.heading up to Horseshoe Lake, as it’s kind of a dreary day and I’m not in a rush to set up camp in the pouring rain, though based on the forecast and the radar I think I’ll likely be driving out of the rain later on today. Stayed up for a while, as I had popped some caffeine pills before riding down to Speculator for extra sparkle and to be extra cantankerous on the internet 
. Took down and organized my camping gear, putting away the flags and anything else that could get get wet 
for easy take down this morning. Did a big pan of eggs and a small thing of coffee, not dillying around too much as I didn’t want to get soaked 
should the rain actually get serious. That said, I don’t think it’s going to be that wet up north – but I didn’t want to be driving completely soaked in the truck.
Need to get some more water from Horseshoe Lake, as I’ve used my first 3 gallon tank over the weekend, especially as I wanted ot make sure the fire was dead out 
Truth is it’s probably not advisable as it’s been such a dry year, though with the campfires, and mostly burning pine scraps, it’s been easy to put it out. That said, there were a few times the wind picked up briefly and sent sparks up but it was dark out and I kept an eye on the firebrands to make sure nothing caught, as if it did, I was ready to stomp it out. It wasn’t super dry up by camp, but there was definately some dry grass some distance from the fire pit that could catch.
