Good morning! Happy Saturday. Finally the weekend! The Sunday before Mother’s Day. 🚺 Next Saturday is Flower Moon 🌕. Partly cloudy, but clearing and 53 degrees ⛅ up at Stewart Landing campsites in the Adirondacks. 🗻 There is a west-northwest breeze at 9 mph. 🍃. A bit chilly when the sun dips under the clouds, laying back in the hammock with the breeze blowing around. The skies will clear around 11 am.

At 4:15 pm Friday I decided to come up camping. ⛺ I had nothing packed or bought for food 🍲 but I decided to leave work, grab my camping gear and head out. I figured I would beat the severe thunderstorm getting home ⚡ and then get packed while it was ongoing and from there after it was over, after rush hour head out of town. I stopped for some groceries and gas and went out to Stewart Landing. I got caught off at the same exit on the Crosstown Arterial in Albany I got rear ended on five years ago but this time I was able to avoid an crash though horns were mashed and brakes slammed. I may have urinated a bit in my pants over that. Yikes. 😮 People ask why I ducking hate motoring so much. The Thruway was completely blocked for a while due to a motorcycle crash, according to the CB radio 📻 but after 15 minutes it freed up and I was moving. It such a ducking bad drive up here with smearing rain the whole way.

Because I had to shop, get gas and get packed, despite leaving work early, I didn’t get to camp until close to 8:15 around dusk 🌆 but the campsite was fine except for the litter 🚮, broken glass and thumb tack 📍 I had to clean up. A lot of litter around here I had to pick up which was annoying but the campsite is mostly cleaned up and I fixed up the fire pit. I’ll bring some of the litter home but the bigger stuff – burnt chair frame, burnt out car radio, lots of burnt wire – I’ll just toss in the pile of other debris back in the woods. It’s at least out of the way for now. I wish people wouldn’t litter – pack out your garbage. If something doesn’t burn fully, haul it out. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t scrap the burnt wire at least that was all over the campsite. Nobody wants to be tripping over wire or broken glass in the darkness.

Things are fairly dry up here 👢but there is a pretty deep and rocky mud hole on the driveway to the campsite ⛺ so I don’t want to drive through it unnecessarily to visit Little Falls today and I’m kind of annoyed about what happened yesterday driving up here. I just don’t want to hit one of those big rocks and bend or break a suspension component. Instead I’ll probably hike back to Hildervaldnt Vly from camp and enjoy the beautiful day in the wilderness. The sun is already charging the battery 🔋 and I expect a good charge with all of the sun.

After I started setting up, somebody took the campsite just down the road, started a big fire 🔥 then packed up and left. Odd. That’s one of the reasons I’ve never camped down here as there isn’t a lot of space between the campsites – the nearest one is about 250 ft away. Not the mile plus of many of the Pisceo Powley sites. But quiet up here today, I can certainly listen to my music later on without bothering folks.

Today will be partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 57 degrees at 2pm. 11 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around April 13th. Northwest wind around 10 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 66 degrees. The record high of 90 was set in 1911. .5 inches of snow fell back in 1907.❄

The sun will set at 8:11 pm with dusk around 8:44 pm, which is one minute and 6 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for partly cloudy skies 🌃 and temperatures around 52 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 7 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 32 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 15 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 38 degrees at 6am. Eight degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 18th. Northwest wind 5 to 7 mph becoming light and variable in the evening. In 2018, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became light rain by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 48 degrees. The record low of 29 occurred back in 1969.

As previously noted, next Saturday is Flower Moon 🌕 when the sun will be setting at 8:19 pm with dusk at 8:52 pm. On that day in 2018, we had partly cloudy and temperatures between 73 and 51 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 70 degrees. We hit a record high of 94 back in 2017.

I should probably finish securing camp and head out on the trail. The hammock, sun and breeze are nice although I did just see my first black fly 🐜 of the year…..