The Woods

Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation – Home Sweet Home – Elk Return to West Virigina

"West Virginia is known by many as the Mountain State. But for more than a century, those mountains lacked one of its long-time residentsβ€”the wild, free-ranging elk. Now, thanks to the efforts of cooperating state wildlife agencies, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and its fired-up volunteers, elk are back the ground on their historic West Virginia range. The latest group to arrive made it thanks to a cross-country trek and a pay-it-forward attitude from a fellow elk state some 1,000 miles away."

Cow Hell Swamp

It looks like it got the name due to the steep bank that cattle probably stumbled down into the muck and slowly but surely drowned in the muck.

Unbroken Natural Lands (Forest, Farmland) Over 10k Acres In New York

While more then 3/5th of the landmass in New York State is forested and roughly a quarter is farmed, many of the parcels are broken up by roads and houses. Even small gaps in natural cover can have significant impacts on wildlife. Most of state's largest parcels of unbroken cover is in the Adirondacks, though a few large parcels can be found in the Catskills and Allegany hills of Western NY. This data set also contains some data from watersheds in Northern Pennsylvania that feed into New York. From the New York Natural Heritage Program:

Although forests in the Northeastern US had been increasing in their extent since the early 1900s, more recently, we are starting to see this trend reverse,with development fragmenting and reducing the size of forests on our landscape. The objective of this project was to delineate road-less forest patches throughout New York State, based on the latest version of the National Land Cover Dataset(2016), and then to assess the condition of those patches within the Hudson River Estuary Watershed.

Data Source: New York Natural Heritage Program, New York Forest Patches, Natural Lands.

Styrofoam Coffee Cups Suck

Years ago, I would occasionally use styrofoam coffee cups while camping. There convenient, they are one less dish to wash. Despite what the greenies will tell you, in a hot fire, styrofoam burns fine. It’s cheap, and it doesn’t involve cutting down trees. Then I switched to a regular coffee mug, as I like the feel of the mug in my hands on a cold morning at camp.

Barge Canal Backwaters

After a while I started getting tired of washing the coffee cup, but I want a disposable, e.g. that I could discard and burn, and that I could take in the truck to sip coffee. I got these plastic-coated paper cups with lids which were quite nice, but relatively expensive. I used up the paper cups but still had lids, so I was thinking I could get some cheap styrofoam cups, and use them with the lids. They don’t fit, and I hate how they feel in my hands, and how they make the coffee taste.

Second cup of coffee

I went back to the old ceramic coffee cup to enjoy my coffee up at camp. They aren’t that hard to wash. And maybe go green, and use a reusable cup in the truck. Coffee cups are easy to rinse out, they are much less of a pain then plates, which I think I will continue to use paper or foam ones that are disposable and burnable up at camp. I figure if they aren’t going to the landfill because I’m burning them, I don’t have to feel guilty about using them once and tossing them, although I guess you could argue that your still wasting the chemicals and trees that make up the styrofoam or paper plates. But so be it.