Good morning! Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day! 👑 I think his birthday 🎂 was yesterday, so a happy belated birthday to him. Now when do we get a holiday to celebrate the life of Fred Hampton?

Mostly sunny and 15 degrees at the Moscow Hill Camping Area. ☀ There is a north breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. Cold start to the morning but it’s warming up fast especially as the sun gets above the hills and into the holler. 🌡️

Cold enough this morning I started Big Red 🛻 for a while to be safe and ensure the battery 🔋 would be good by the time to leave. I don’t like idling my truck too much while camping due to oil consumption from idling and the famous 5.3 lifter tick but I didn’t want a dead starting battery either in the cold. She started right up though. It was in the single digits last night. I was a bit concerned as it appeared some voltage was bleeding through the relay last night to the accessory battery from the staring battery when I was idling the truck, not sure what that was about, but it didn’t cause any issues. 🤷‍♂️

M. L. King Day will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 32 degrees at 2pm. Typical for M.L.King Day. It’s the coldest week of winter on average though not this year. LA Nina and global warming from rednecks like me who drive big jacked up trucks and burn too much plastic. Northwest wind 6 to 11 mph. A year ago, we had light freezing rain in the morning with a few breaks of sun the afternoon. The high last year was 37 degrees. The record high of 62 was set in 1995. 15.1 inches of snow fell back in 1945.❄

Today I’m going to take down camp and maybe hike back to Tassell Hill from Chittenden Pond. ⛰ It’s the highest point in Oneida County and I’ve never been there before. Might also hike around Brookfield Creek loop and or Glimmerglass though I’ve done the later a few times. Then I want to head home relatively early and take a shower 🚿 and wash the salt and sand off Big Red 🛻 and get ready for a regular session work day on Tuesday.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:12 pm with sun having an altitude of 26.2° from the due south horizon (-44.4° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 12.2 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 4:10 pm with the sun in the southwest (234°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (242°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:54 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 19 seconds with dusk around 5:24 pm, which is one minute and 11 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 6:00 pm. At sunset, look for sunny skies 🌃 and temperatures around 30 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 10 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 28 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 40 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 19 degrees at 12am. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around February 19th. Maximum wind chill around 20 at 5am; Northwest wind 5 to 7 mph becoming calm after midnight. In 2022, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 28 degrees. The record low of -23 occurred back in 1971.

Yesterday I hiked about 12 miles around Charles Baker State Forest 🌲🌳 checking out some of the more remote campsites, deep back country horse 🐴 trails, Lost Pond, Evergreen Pond Lean To, Quaker Cemetery 🪦 and the Old Little Red School 🏫 House, a one room school house that’s now somebody’s residence. I was surprised 🤨 I ran into more people than I expected in the woods.

While not currently a state holiday, next Monday is National Cheese Lovers Day 🧀 when the sun will be setting at 5:04 pm with dusk at 5:33 pm. Nobody can be opposed to that. Plus soon I won’t be walking home from work in the dark. 🔦 On that day in 2022, we had mostly sunny skies, a few snow showers and temperatures between 24 and 11 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 32 degrees. We hit a record high of 64 back in 1906.