Search Results for: photo toes in the potholers

Happy Lupine Festival Day! 🦋

Out walking this morning right at six o’clock and then there are more Committee Agendas and legislation to review for work while eating breakfast and sipping coffee out back before tabling a good portion of the day the Lupine Festival for Save the Pine Bush. Going to try to find time to walk 8 miles today in between the rain drops, though I doubt I’ll melt.

Good morning! Happy Saturday. Finally the weekend! But the work never stops until some time after June 10th or so I tell myself. Cloudy and 54 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ There is a south-southeast breeze at 8 mph. 🍃. Not so cold this morning for the walk 🚶. The dew point is 49 degrees. The skies will clear tomorrow around 3 am.

I was up pretty early this morning 🌅 but then again this time of year the sun rise is early. Stumbled around a bit but now I’m going again and out walking 🚶. I figured walk first then breakfast 🍳 which will be eggs, a shit ton of spinach along with orange and red peppers and onions and probably tomatoes 🍅 as you can’t forget them.

Today will have showers likely, mainly after 5pm. Cloudy 🌦, with a high of 69 degrees at 1pm. Four degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around May 9th. Maximum dew point of 59 at 6pm. South wind 8 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Okay, New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with a few breaks of sun the afternoon. The high last year was 79 degrees. The record high of 91 was set in 1962.

So yes a busy Saturday ahead. 😃 Lots of things to do. One thing I can 🥫 check off my list ☑ is I ended up grocery shopping 🛒 last night rather than Sunday. I wanted to get some more apples 🍏 and I noticed the store was freshly stocked so I figured get it done. That way I’ll be down by the end of the week next week and can go shopping again if I decide to head out of town to camp ⛺. I don’t know though with the best campsites likely taken and the black flies. 🐜 Plus I told John whose wife is sick this weekend I would probably come up next weekend. Still waiting on parts for my bicycle 🚲, I don’t see myself wrenching it this weekend.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:53 pm with sun having an altitude of 67.3° from the due south horizon (-3.5° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 2.5 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 7:35 pm with the sun in the west-northwest (292°). 📸

I got cranberry beans soaking in the refrigerator today, 🍲I plan to cook them either tonight or tomorrow to add to meals throughout the week. Salmon with rice, kale, onions and peppers for dinner tonight. 🐠

The sunset is in the west-northwest (299°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 8:16 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 17 seconds with dusk around 8:48 pm, which is one minute later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent 🌒 Moon in the west-northwest (296°) at an altitude of 10° from the horizon, 245,175 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 9:30 pm. At sunset, look for rain 🌧 and temperatures around 65 degrees. The dew point will be 60 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 7 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 50 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 53 seconds over yesterday.

Last night twice the express bus 🚍had to pull over on the shoulder of the road because the battery box door kept opening up. Both on Interstate 787 and the Delmar bypass. Poor driver had to get out on the shoulder with racing traffic going by and try to secure it. The second time, a CDTA supervisor in his personal vehicle saw the breakdown and stopped by. One of the passengers joked with only three passengers he could have just given us a ride home 🏡. Friday usually is very light on the bus, a lot of people work from home or like me often head out of town.

I think the Voorheesville bus hasn’t rebuilt it’s ridership enough, I bet come mid June it will be back to starting and ending at the Park and Ride. 🚏 It’s tough in the era of hybrid work and work from home. I’m okay with that, as I like the walk especially on non session days and it will be more timely ⌚ as the driver for the 7:30 run will dead head back and do the 8:30 run downtown and the same with me 4 pm and 5 pm route. While drivers can always hit traffic on Southern Boulevard or 787, with that dead head the layover is long enough to avoid most delays unlike running a city route before. ☺

Tonight will have showers, mainly before 2am. 🌧 Low of 50 degrees at 5am. One degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around May 19th. South wind around 7 mph becoming west after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. In 2022, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It became sticky as the night progressed. It got down to 65 degrees. The record low of 32 occurred back in 1949.

I keep watching as the forecast for Memorial Day Weekend 🇺🇸 gets warmer and sunnier but I’m afraid I’ll have to work. Maybe my best plan remains to hammock camp ⛺ a night or two quite primatively locally. I’ll figure it out as those days get closer. I’m just really hoping for a nice Juneteenth Weekend at the Potholers and House Pond Campsite. It could rain though. Summer is not done yet! Though only 105 days remain until the Labor Day Weekend.

One month 📅 from now will be Primary Day 🗳️ when the sun will be setting at 8:38 pm with dusk at 9:11 pm. I’m not sure whose on the ballot locally but I could check at the county board of elections website. I will want to Early Vote because they moved my Election Day site to the Town Park which isn’t convenient for me when I’m busy on Election Day.

Towards Utsayathana

The Weekend that Was

Saturday was an action packed day but a good one. I started the day pretty early with the Save the Pine Bush Bird Hike and Neil Reilly did not disappoint. I wish I had some better glass. I got to invest in some binoculars. And a good bird book. 🐦Neil helped me learn a lot of birds but will I remember them all? I really need to learn more about the flora and fauna I’m observing in the wilderness. It would help with hunting too, especially if I eventually get into big game when I own my own land. 🔭

I bought a spatula at the Hannaford in Esperance. Forgot mine at home. $10 with tax seemed pricey but I figured hopefully this all metal one will hold up. 🍴 Then I can keep the big camp spatula for my camping supply box and use the other one at home. Unlike some of the spatulas I’ve previously owned this one is a single piece of metal so it’s less likely to break at the weld like some of the other I own. I burn a lot of food so I break a lot of spatulas scraping pans. 🍳 But now I have a camp and a home one and hopefully the home one lasts a long time.

Moss Island was fun but the colors were just changing and it’s the third time I’ve been there so it’s less interesting now. Still a nice hike, as was doing some of the Erie Canal Trail through the deep railroad cut. 🚶 Japanese Knotweed is really taking over part of the gorge though. That invasive species is everywhere these days it seems. 🌾Went out for a short paddle on the Mohawk River from Little Falls past Moss Island to the old Fink Basin Bridge foundation. 🌉 It’s hard to spot the foundation at this point because the Japanese Knotweed is all over it. Needless to say, I’m very concerned about the Japanese Knotweed taking over everything. When they were pumping out the lock, the water Goya bit choppy but I was far enough away not to be real impacted. That Lock 17 drops 40 feet so it’s a pretty big lock with a lot of water to move downstream.

Leaving the Pine Bush hike I was a bit concerned about the squeak that was coming from the rear wheel of my truck. 🚚 It sounded like a brake noise because it changed when I applied the brakes. But they’re working fine and after a few good hard applies of the brakes they’ve mostly gone away. Think it’s either mud or maybe just glaze that’s built up from last week overheating the brakes heading down through Durham. Should have used a lower gear heading down the hill. Heading towards Stratford I smelled somebody burning their garbage and thought it might be the brakes but the smell went away after driving past their farm. Hillbilly incense getting me all upset. If y’all going to burn your plastic garbage, at least burn it in a hot fire so it don’t stink. 🔥 I checked, rotators aren’t warm and aren’t dragging – and after a few hard braking the noise is mostly gone. But it’s concerning enough I scheduled an appointment to have it looked at. Pretty sure it’s just the drum brake mechanism is acting up.

Driving up to Pisceo-Powley Road from Little Falls I stopped and got some sweet corn 🌽 and tomatoes. 🍅 I then stopped at Green Acres Drive In and got Pumpkin Ice Cream 🍦🎃 which I swear the cream was a bit rancid. It was okay but I don’t think I’d get end of the season ice cream again from them.

I ended up camping at campsite five at Pisceo-Powley Road. ⛺ They cut up the tree that fell during that severe thunderstorm that came through ⚡ that mid August long weekend that I delayed my entry to avoid. I’m glad I missed that storm a lot of branches came down around this campsite but the DEC did a nice job cleaning up around the site. I like that campsite a lot because it’s remote and I can listen to music, 🎶 shoot guns 🔫 and burn whatever I want without bothering folks. 🔥Just like when I own my own land. No neighbors, no rules. 📐 But that doesn’t mean I’ll trash my own land. That said finding burnt out of aluminum cans wasn’t cool. I flattened them and will take home for recycling. It your going to burn stuff in the woods at least pack out what doesn’t burn completely. 🚯♻ Outhouse seat also seemed like somebody broke it. A shame, the outhouse is only a year old. Still works but the wood in the seat is cracked. 💺

The storm in August meant there was quite a bit of dead and down wood around camp. I had plenty for the fire. I always try to get wood a bit farther away from camp to save the close-by wood for other campers who get here late or myself for that matter. 🌲

Setting up camp went well but I discovered that I spilled bleach and water in my truck bed. Ruined another pair of jeans 👖. Ducks but I needed more jeans to wear on casual days to work. I can wear the bleached pair of jeans at home. Made some sweet sausage 🍣and mashed potatoes for dinner – along with sweet corn 🌽. I wanted to make angel hair pasta 😇 with dinner but I forgot to pack butter.

Sun sets early this time of year but I had the mess cleaned up in my truck, dinner cooked and the lights strung by dark which occurred relatively late in the woods on this very clear day. 🌇 Still it was pitch black before 7:30 which made for a long night but with the two batteries powering the lights it wasn’t a big deal. I got things done that needed to be done by then including getting a fire going. 🔥 Got cold and put the hoodie and long pants on. Even with the warm weather it gets cold at night. With the long night, I was shocked 😲 how quickly I drank the six pack I brought. 🍻 I wasn’t trying to get drunk but I made a lot of beer dissappear quickly. Oh well, I must have been thirsty and I slept it off. Minor hang over this morning.

This morning was quite nice I had eggs 🍳 and sausage along with coffee. ☕ It was a cold start but it warmed up relatively quickly. I ended up hanging out in the warm sun for a while, listening to the radio 📻 for a while and then swinging in the hammock while working on some blog posts.

Midday I went for a kayak paddle down the East Canada Creek 🚤 and it was quite colorful and quiet out on the creek. Water levels were pretty low. But I made it over the beaver dam and the leaves were nice. 🍁 Didn’t bother with the fishing pole as I’ve never had much luck fishing there. Spent a little time at the potholers but it was quite cold and the sky had clouded up and it was getting late.

I got home, unpacked and scheduled an appointment for next week to have my truck looked at.🔧 The noise seems to come and go but I think it’s getting worse so I should get it fixed. I’ll probably stay in town next week because I need to save money 💵 and I also I don’t want something to break while I am out of town.

I’ll post more photos 📷 and videos 🎥 throughout the week.

South Mountain

June 17, 2019 Morning

Good morning! Final week of the Legislative Session. Or so I’m hoping. Sitting downtown at a railway station 🚉 one toke over the line. Or so goes the Brewer and Shipley song on the radio. Next Monday is Latest Sunset of the Year 🌆. About a half week after the first day of summer, due to the shifting transit of the sun. Now if the sun ever came out, we could enjoy that more. Maybe today. Partly sunny and 68 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind. The dew point is 57 degrees. Going to a nice day.

Feeling fairly decent this morning, 😀 only with a minor headache that isn’t bothering me too much. DIdn’t feel all that great after going to see my parents house, but then I went home and got to bed fairly early. I was originally planning to spend the night at my parents house in the camper shell, but it was kind of rainy, wet evening, so I decided to go home. 👔 I think it was a good thing though, because it gave me time last night to get my shirts hung up, and clothes put away before this most busy of weeks at work. I am just allergic to Mondays, or so I think. I did clean up the mildew in the bathroom, especially in the tub, 🛀 so hopefully that will help.

Today will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 79 degrees at 4pm. Nice weather, with temperatures typical for today. Maximum dew point of 57 at 8am. Low humidity, nice. Calm wind becoming north around 5 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 90 degrees. Much hotter. The record high of 94 was set in 1994.

I fully expect a long day at work. I packed lunch and dinner, and hopefully I will be able to find room in one of multiple mini-refigerators that have in the office to make up for the big dead one. 🍗🌯😋 I am guessing I will be taking the 9:45 or 10:30 bus home tonight, 🚌 but the nice thing about the bus, is even if I’m in a daze and tired, I don’t have to worry about the traffic lights or hitting something. Plus, I think most of the drivers know my stop, and I’ll set the alarm on the phone for 5 minutes before I expect to need to get off the bus. I’m going to take each day by day this morning, and only get my truck in evening if I expect to be released between 11:30 PM and 6 AM — which seems unlikely.

The sun will set at 8:35 pm with dusk around 9:10 pm, which is 21 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for partly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 72 degrees. The dew point will be 56 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 15 hours and 18 minutes of daytime, an increase of 15 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have isolated showers after 11pm. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 59 degrees at 4am. Two degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around June 22nd. Maximum dew point of 56 at 7pm. Calm wind. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies. It became sticky as the night progressed. It got down to 71 degrees. The record low of 39 occurred back in 1958.

Looks like a really nice weekend. Two options are on the short list for the weekend. ⛺ My preferred option would be to leave after work on Friday for Piseco Powley Road, paddle Lily Lake from Stewart Landing, see the Lilies 🌸, have a nice fire 🔥 and maybe do the Potholers on Sunday. I also want to hike back to Dexter Lake but I doubt I’ll be able to do that in a weekend. It would be nice to get back to the Adirondacks — the last time I was up in the area was in early May, and I would like to see Lily Lake before the lilies are gone, like happened last year.

But that all depends on how long the legislative session goes this week. 🏯 If I’m at work until 3 AM on Friday I’m not going to drive up to the Adirondacks unless maybe they give us Friday off. I also need time to pack 💼 and pick up some supplies although I guess I could stop on my way out there. It’s possible but unlikely that Wednesday will be the very late night. Maybe things could go into Friday daytime but I doubt it. I am not going to kill myself to get up there on a lack of sleep 😴 with Friday traffic.

The alternative is a Schoharie County trip. 🏊 Mine Kill pool opens Saturday so I could hike the trails around there, swim in the pool, ⛺ camp at Burnt Rossman, 🚶 hike the Cliffs of Middleburgh or Vromans Nose, fish the Schoharie Creek 🐠 and swim again. That could be nice alternative. I always like to do a few Schoharie County trips during the summer weekends, especially once that sweet corn is out. But I could get some strawberries 🍓 and maybe tomatoes 🍅 are Boriengers this weekend. If that’s the option I’m stuck with, which really wouldn’t be bad but I’d prefer the Adirondacks.

Wiring projects are done on the truck. 🔋I’m really interested to see how things preform with the additional battery, and how much power I’m actually getting out of the solar panel in various conditions. With the clouds yesterday, I only have a total of 82 watt hours from the panel, but to be fair it was cloudy and rainy yesterday, and the solar controlled floated the batteries after I had driven a bit with the alternator doing most of the topping off. I was thinking I am pretty much done with wiring projects, but now I’m thinking about getting an MPPT solar controller. ☀ That would help with charging the batteries better in low light conditions, and they’ve certainly come down in price, even if a decent quality one — like the Renology Rover, which I found for sale as low as $80. But not right away, as it would require some moving around of components and cutting new wires, and I’m in no rush to do it, when my existing PWM controller works just fine, and may be more then suitable for all my needs. Plus $80 bucks is money spent today is money that can’t be saved for a future, when I have land and actual need for a real MPPT solar controller for my off-grid home.

It will be interesting to see what happens with marijuana this week. 🚬 For sure. I think it’s an interesting agriculture crop 🌾, especially after reading that article this weekend in the Buffalo News that I shared below about the possibility of home growing. Turns out it’s a pretty easy crop to grow in a backyard flower pot, which is not surprising as you sometimes find it growing in the woods. I think it could get people interested in gardening and agriculture, although I do think there are legitimate concerns about the smoke and odors of people burning it especially in urban areas. It really stinks and the odor lingers around — I can tell when people are smoking pot in the parking lot 100 feet from my place — or when somebody gets on the bus after smoking.💨 Few things besides mucking a hog or dairy barn are as pungent in the air or on your clothes. 🐽

Hopefully with the majority of the nation’s population legalizing it we can see national action as that would make it easier for growers and avoid potential headaches for gun owners with the existing laws, although I’m not sure how they’d know if you bought legal pot or not. It might be a fun crop to grow in a pot or garden with other herbs and veggies 🌿 and cure when I own land, although I doubt I’d ever pay the high price for it commercially. 💰 Maybe if I got it free at a reception or party, but I’m not going to spend $20 bucks for a hit of it at some fancy-pansy commercial place. I would never use it heavy, but maybe a few times a year, a hit or some pot brownies would be good, especially when I own my own land.🍰

On this day in 1972, Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee,👮 in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap their opposition. 👂This would become the basis for the Watergate scandal. Then Tom Paxton wrote a fun song about it. Had they not burglarized the Watergate, Mr. Paxton would have had to write a different song. The DNC stuck there for decades after, but lately has moved to a newer shiny office building of their own.

As previously noted, next Monday is Latest Sunset 🌆 when the sun will be setting at 8:37 pm with dusk at 9:12 pm. On that day in 2018, we had rain and temperatures between 76 and 61 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 80 degrees. We hit a record high of 96 back in 1943.

More Pond Scumb

July 19, 2015 update

Today is hazy, hot and humid. Probably pushing the upper 70s to mid 80s here in the Western Adirondacks but likely to reach 90 plus in the city for the first time in two years. They talk a lot about global warming but it seems like New York has been in a cold spell the past few years. The west coast, however is baking.

I’m sure that it will be as hot as hell when I get back to Albany, which is why I hung out at the Potholers as long as possible, and still have a reasonable amount of time to get home and unpack in the blazing heat.

Friday night I drove up to camp in what was mix of showers and cloudy conditions. No heavy rain but enough to get the woods wet. Traffic however was bumper to bumper and slow all the way from Albany to Schenectady. I decided to come back to Piseco Powley Road this weekend primarily because I thought I left a backpack along the banks of the East Canada Creek.

I only discovered that the backpack was missing on Tuesday, and while it didn’t have anything valuable in it except a set of keys, I still wanted to retrieve it if possible. Everything else in the backpack was of marginal value, closer to garbage and future carbon dioxide then useful products. I kind of cared about the keys, as those included a set of keys for my truck that are the chipped type, which might be expensive to replace – especially if the $25 Amazon uncut but chipped keys turned out not to pair correctly. I decided it wasn’t worth driving an hour and a half to go search for the keys after work, only to possibly turn around empty handed and drive back home empty handed in the dark. I figured at this point nobody going to bother the backpack within the two days until the weekend or if somebody finds it, they’ll call the forest ranger. I called the ranger to let him know of the lost backpack. Honestly, my biggest concern was a forest beast would drag and shred the backpack into the woods or waterwater, with the keys forever lost.

I found the backpack with the keys and now rotting food inside it. And a somewhat moldy version of American Hunter magazine with of course my home address on the cover. Missing were a crappy leaking compass, cigarette lighter and a beat up old Nalgene water bottle. I can’t imagine anyone would steal either… It may have fallen out some point in the weekend. The backpack was pretty much shot before it got left out with a broken zipper and fabric with holes. I’m taking the keys to my gun safe, truck cap, office and apartment off the second key ring I carry in my day pack for emergencies. Some day hopefully soon my gun safe might be worth robbing. And while I always carefully police my campsite when I leave for the weekend to ensure there is no scraps of litter, bungee cords or loss supplies, I’m now going to a make sure to double check I have my day pack and second set of keys with me. I didn’t catch the pack because it was by the water and not in the campsite.

The Powley Bridge site and other sites nearby were taken, so I decided to try out the campsite on top of the hill you climb the hill past Brayhouse Brook and the Potholers. I had never camped at this site and while I knew the driveway was a bit soft, the site is on a hill and well drained, so I figured it would be good in the rainy conditions expected for the evening.

As I started to get the site set up, it started to drizzle again, but the site had good trees for hanging the tarp. I hung it up and got the table set up and quickly got a fire started using some nice Stewarts kiln dries firewood and burnable garbage I brought from home. Got the lights wired up and made hot dogs up with all the fixings. Good dinner. The drizzle on the tarp didn’t seem to bother me or the campfire much. Stayed up until 11:30 p.m. All and all a pleasant ending to a tough work week.

Wet and humid are the best way to describe the conditions on Saturday morning. While wet and humid are vastly better conditions in the woods then pouring rain and cold and wet, they are hardly ideal for camping. Everything gets wet just from the dampness, even if it’s not raining much. By about 2 PM it started to clear a bit.

Did some target shooting for a while, and some reading Saturday afternoon. Once the sun came out and the humidity creeped up, started getting a bit warm. Mosquitoes and those gosh darn horse flies started biting, and I had to get the DEET out. Freaking Westchester ammo seems to jam more. Maybe I just need to clean and lubricate my shotgun more. I do want to get some kind of rimfire rifle that’s cheaper to shoot. Thinking about a 17 HMR, as unlike 22 ammo is seems to be usually in stock at Walmart, and can be had for 10 cent a round or $10 for 100. Went down to the Potholers for about an hour, took some pictures with my waterproof case. Seemed to do the job, even if all the case is a heavy vinyl zip lock bag with a heavier sealing mechanism. It was $12 to keep my $40 smartphone dry.

Cooked up these super delicious BBQ flavor chicken breasts and rice for dinner. The smell of the breasts was so delicious, I could have almost eaten them raw. Once they were cooked, they were as amazing as they smelled. Shoprite did an amazing job with the sauce. They weren’t particularly more expensive than regular breasts, although I probably could have bought some marinade and made up something similar in a zip lock bag.

I had a nice campfire the second night, but it wasn’t quite the same as the previous night, because I had burnt up most of the Stewart’s wood and in the summer heat was pretty lazy and didn’t gather up much wood. Still I perked up the fire, put on some podcasts and stayed up until 11:30.

The next morning was also pretty lazy, enjoying a nice breakfast, and listening to a podcast, slowly took apart camp, mostly hurrying with the tarp, too ensure I got it down and put away with the constant threat of thunderstorms. None really happened, and things were good. Did some more target practice, finished off the coffee.

As I write this post, I’m down at the Potholers on this hot summer day. The water is refreshing. There really is no place I’d rather be with such warm weather. Ran into somebody from Westerlo down there, taking a family vacation up here. Can’t beat this weather for the Potholers.

This is the lazy weekend that was. Sometimes it nice to get away in the heat and just hang in the water. Back to Albany now, more photos later.