Good morning! Happy Columbus Day 🛥️! For me it means the second half of the trip back home 🏡 from West Virginia and getting unpacked. Two weeks to Average High is 55 🍂. Mostly sunny and 46 degrees at the Mount Pisgah County Park. There is a southwest breeze at 7 mph. 🍃.

I was up at 6:15 am this morning, 🌄as I had chilli last night and too much beer 🍻 and had to visit the outhouse early on. 💩 Being I was in a campground it was a short walk but at least I got things taken down early and I’m stopping at the Mount Pisgah County Park for a bit.

Columbus Day will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 56 degrees at 1pm. Five degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around October 25th. West wind 7 to 13 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 59 degrees. The record high of 81 was set in 1920.

So the October Road Trip is almost over. Just have to make it home safely and unpack. Then out to the folks house. It was a good trip although not the one I had originally planned. 🚙 The burn ban made me alter my plans and for a while I wasn’t planning on going to West Virginia. 📛 Time marches on, that’s all I can say.

But I did and spent three nights there before overnighting in County Bridge Campground outside of Troy, Penna last night. Only night in a developed campground. We other sites were taken but none nearby and it was very quiet there. Nice thing about the developed area is no bucket shitter 💩 to empty and bury the poop, and I don’t have to take down my table so a faster take down this morning.

Dash cam 🎥 didn’t record for part of the trip back but I didn’t have all that much great to save. I did get some nice clips to post on the blog later this week. Stay tuned!

The sun will set at 6:27 pm with dusk around 6:55 pm, which is one minute and 36 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for partly cloudy skies 🌃 and temperatures around 50 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 9 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 9 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 44 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have patchy frost after 5am. Otherwise, partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 35 degrees at 5am. Five degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around October 31st. West wind 5 to 7 mph. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 39 degrees. The record low of 27 occurred back in 1978.

I could have done the New River Gorge and spent the balance of my trip in West Virginia 😔 but it seemed like the burn ban was going to be in place for most of the week. Sure I have the propane heater and electric lights 🚥 💡 but there is something about having a fire each night, if only a small fire is o provide some entertainment and company and take care of the burn trash. 🔥 So many wet wipes to get rid of when you are using them as your primary way to clean up your body. Maybe I should have stuck to the original plan but the Allegheny National Forest was neat as was visiting Pennsylvania High Point, Cook Forest and Hoye-Crest in Maryland.

It wasn’t a bad night, and it’s a convient place to stay at between Albany and West Virginia, ⛺ about half way between the two places at least if your like me and want to stay some place relatively quiet and cheap, while limiting driving to 4 hours a day, leaving the remaining time to visit parks or hop on back roads. That said, I’d prefer to camp somewhere I can gather up my own wood, listen to music 🎶 as loud as I want, not have to worry about bothering anyone with the smoke. At least I could have a decent fire 🔥 because I had some leftover wood from Stewart’s that I bought for the trip down and I used the Big Buddy Hester to keep my chair comfortable. Cold enough I wish I could have hot tented but I wasn’t going to pitch a tent for one night. It was fine under the covers.

I thought the Cannan Refuge was a disappointment but maybe the second seven miles down the rough dirt road would have been better. 🐦 The part I explored was the standard mixed forest, nothing much better than the Five Rivers Environmental Education Center I walk 🚶 to from home. At any rate, I was expecting something more marshy and full of birds like Montezuma. But it’s just not that kind of area. Moreover, the weather wasn’t all that great compared to the original forecast for yesterday.

Stopped at the Blue Knob State Park. 🗻 Kind of dead this time of year with the ski resort closed. And it was a rather gray day which sort of blocked the view and made it harder to see from the summit. I wonder if Blue Knob is the second highest peak in Pennsylvania. Nice country driving through Imler and surrounding lands. Good farmland, big dairies 🐄 around there.

Most of the drive up through Pennsylvania was fairly overcast and not real nice. ☁ The colors weren’t very good either. Passed some nice farm country in Pennsylvania. Mostly dairy 🐮 but some hogs 🐽, chickens 🐔, sheep 🐑 etc. Grains like corn 🌽 and soybeans too 🌾. Lots of Amish and Menonites along PA 26 and the Nittany Valley farming. I get not owning a car or living off grid but having no solar seems a bit extreme. But I guess if you can’t make it yourself, you shouldn’t own it. 🚜 I do have a lot of respect for the Amish even if their environmental record is a bit mixed. They do use some technology like silage wrap on their farms – which being Pennsylvania I’m sure is burned when discarded.

Driving 🚘 up through Pennsylvania I can assure still plenty of rural households and farms in Pennsylvania that burn virtually everything – you could see the black smoke, the piles of burnt cans and glass and ash in folks backyards and bags of trash next to the burn barrel waiting to be torched. 🔥 I didn’t have to go far in Pennsylvania to see the first pile of junk people were burning in their driveway. Wood with other goodies in that fire. Also saw some one burning trash in Maryland too and a few rural houses in West Virginia with burn barrels out back. Beats the landfill in my view, despite the sometimes stench 👃, although I think I would seperate out the cans and glass for recycling ♻ when I own my own land – and maybe build some kind of better incinerator than the common burn barrel most folks use. 👍 I can tell you as a fact there isn’t much burn trash I’m taking home from camp. Seems like a waste especially of the tin cans to throw the metal away – and it’s not like they burn or help the fire at all.

I decided to get off Interstate 99 at PA 414 through Liberty, Penna🗽 . Talk about a windy, narrow state highway in country that at worse was rolling. 🚙 I don’t understand why it’s such a bad road. Scenic yes, but hardly a good route to travel. At least not as bumpy and rough as River Road. But obnoxiously slow. I was having problems my phone not charging the whole time 📱, fortunately though I had enough power for Waze to direct me to destination.

I could go to West Virginia possibly next November but who knows. 😕 I might have to do a recount for work, and snow ⛄ is always a possibility like last year. I know I don’t want anything to do with West Virginia if snow and ice conditions are even a remote possibility. No thanks for sure. 2021 if I decide to go back, it might be a a very different experience if I decide to go car-less that year and have to rent a car. 🚙 It might be fun to see West Virginia in a rented car especially a hybrid electric car on those hills. Wouldn’t have to be as gentle on the rough roads either. Always worry about breaking Big Red down there. Another possibility would be a trip – probably by plane ✈ and rental car to see Missouri and the Midwest that year.

The past two nights have been bright 🔆 with the moonlight 🌕. Woke up Saturday night hot tent camping to take a piss in West Virginia and the inside of the tent was bright from the moonlight. Bitterly cold Sunday morning – I woke up and it was 26 degrees out. But after turning the Big Buddy heater on things he warned up quickly.

It was a good trip and generally came below budget 💸as I spent less time in West Virginia then originally expected. The bad weather ☔ a few days meant I drank more beer 🍻 then originally planned but I drove fewer miles ⛽ even when you consider I started my week in the Allegheny National Forest. 🌲Only spent one night in a campground, keeping those expenses lower and my food expenses were only slightly higher than normal – and I have left overs for future weeks to eat. Wet wipes, paper plates and towels, plastic forks, 🍴 etc too – seems like a waste to use once and burn 🔥 but when camping water 💦 is a precious commodity and its nice to stay clean as possible.

Tomorrow is a pay day 👍and it’s a three paycheck month so by the time the November credit card 💳 bill is due with the brake job on my truck and vacation expenses I’ll hopefully have my fund balance rebuilt. I can return some of the unspent cash to the bank.💰 I really needed to get away from Albany for a bit, go to some places much culturally and socially different from Albany. Despite the tight finances, I’m still sticking to my savings and investing plan. Travel and camping expenses will decline come winter but eventually I’ll be paying for heat 🔥 again but so it goes. I want to do some winter camping but the conditions have to be right and it won’t be an every day thing.

Definitely looking for a good shower when I get home. 🚿 It’s been ten days – Saturday October 5th since I’ve washed my full body. I’ve tried to keep as clean as possible but it’s hard when you are in the backcountry in October and you can’t really go for a swim 🏊 to clean your body. Did lots of hiking too ehic produces a lot of sweat. 😰

Generated and consumed a kilowatt of power through the solar panel over the past week. ☀ I wonder how much total power I consumed as I frequently used the alternator to top off accessory batteries. 🔋 Generally the system worked well. Once or twice the low voltage disconnect kicked in but that was one time due to a heavier load and one time in a dark morning in the cold pulling a decent load the voltage ⚡ dropped under the threshold. The sun rose, voltage increased and the load was automatically reconnected when safe. Driving 🚘 home I’m charging the laptop and running all accessory loads exclusively on the solar.

A picture perfect weekend on tap. 😎 Saturday, mostly sunny, with a high near 56. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 61. Maximum dew point of 49 at 7pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 59 degrees. Should be great weather for the Save the Pine Bush hike! 🌲🌲🌲We are doing a walk down Rapp Road, it should be a nice one. Maybe fall foliage hike 🚶 on Sunday?

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until Average High is 55 🍂 when the sun will be setting at 6:07 pm with dusk at 6:35 pm. On that day in 2018, we had mostly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 51 and 41 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 55 degrees. We hit a record high of 78 back in 1971.

Good evening! Partly clear 🌃 and 53 degrees at the Monongahela National Forest. There is a southeast breeze at 5 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 43 degrees. Beautiful evening at camp listening to Mountain Stage, recorded live 23 miles from where I’m camping. 🎸

It was a beautiful day hiking at Dolly Sods. 🚶Definitely the best day so far on vacation. Dolly Sods was amazing for color, and I had a great campfire back at camp. Tired 😴 after hiking more than ten miles 🔟, it seemed like I barely went that far as with the open sods of the area, you can see a long way. Some parts of Dolly Sods were bone 🍖 dry, others down by the Red Crick where super wet. For being a drought isn’t expect to be hiking in ankle deep mud. But at the same time I wouldn’t want to have a fire anywhere in the sods like people often do camping in mid summer.

Honestly, when it wasn’t too cold and their isn’t a fire ban, ⛺ camping in the Dolly Sods must be an amazing experience full of stars. I had originally to camp down on Forest Road 75 below the sods where they allow roadside camping but that will have to wait for a future year.

Later on in the afternoon I stopped at Seneca Rocks. ⛲ Confirmed down there no fire ban. 🚫If it was earlier I would have climbed the Seneca Rocks but it was 5:45 pm and sunset 🌇 was just around the corner. ⌛They have a big developed campground there, I should have thought about paying the three bucks for the day use of the shower 🚿.

You see a lot of Black Angus cattle in this part of West Virginia. 🐃 You could smell them a bit at Seneca Rocks. 💩 Land is only good enough for foraging and grazing around here, a few chicken 🐔 or turkey farms 🍗 but they’re more in the wider and agricultural rich Sweedlin Valley where they can raise more corn 🌽 to feed the chicks 🐥. After spending so much time in the mountains, it was odd to smell the grazing cattle around Seneca Rocks. Dairy 🐄 up in Western Maryland but not here. Just not the forages necessary to sustain dairy cattle in the mountains.

I downshifted to first gear and took breaks going down Dolly Sods Road and didn’t have any issues with the brakes. 🚙 I thought about stopping by Spruce Knob Mountain to watch the sun set from West Virginia’s highest peak at 4,860 feet but I didn’t want to drive back to camp an hour away in the darkness.

There was a Southern Wedding 💒 at the Bear Rocks today in Dolly Sods. Kind of odd to see all those people in suits standing in the Mountain Laurel and Blueberry bushes but it’s certainly a beautiful place to get married in the wilderness. ♥ Looked like a beautiful ceremony in the wilderness. Very lovely, it looked like a real Appalachian couple 👫 not a high priced ceremony.

It was pretty crossing the Appalachian divide on US 33 this evening 🚚 except for the part behind a slow moving truck. US 33 in that part is pretty wide and while there are some hairpin curves ⤵ it’s fairly wide and an easy drive. Harmon WV is a cute Appalachian town nestled in the mountains, I’d eventually want to live in a place like that but not in the village proper but up in the hills. 🏡 Probably with open burning laws more like Pennsylvania though.

I did see a few burn barrels along the way, including a fire 🔥 on a hobby farm below Dolly Sods. 🚜 But not a lot of burning, it’s much more restrictive in WV than Penna. 📛 It has to do a lot with the state’s implementation plan for the Clean Air Act – go after the poor farmer and homesteaders rather than the coal plants. You know the coal plants that burn thousands of tons a coal every day, 🏭 sending electrons to far away places like the Washington DC metro area. Plus the area I was in is much more built up and in deep valleys compared to Pennsylvania.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 51 degrees at 1am. 10 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around September 18th. Maximum dew point of 47 at 6am. South wind 5 to 8 mph. Nice mild evening with the full moon or pretty close. 🌕 In 2018, we had light drizzle in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It was somewhat humid. It got down to 45 degrees. The record low of 22 occurred back in 1964.

Had a nice little camp fire 🔥 for a while now that the burn ban is over. Made sure to dig out the pit well before starting the fire and cleared all the leaves nearby, moved the tent further away and made sure to drown the coals and bury them in the pit to make sure that the fire was cold before bed. Probably excessive as this part of the Monongahela National Forest is not sioe dry – there is water in the ditch and digging through the leaf litter you can feel the dampness in the soil. But based on how easy the dry wood I used for firewood is obvious the dead wood is primed to burn. The fire was fantastic and made quick work of the camp trash.♻

Tonight is the Hunter Moon 🌕 or pretty darn close to it. The sun will rise at 7:23 am with the first light at 6:56 am, which is 59 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 12 hours and 38 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes and 31 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be scattered showers, mainly between 10am and 2pm. I’ll probably sleep in tomorrow and if it’s really drizzling in the morning, hot tent with a good book. Mostly cloudy 🌦, with a high of 54 degrees at 7am. Seven degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around October 30th. Maximum dew point of 52 at 10am. West wind 10 to 13 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. Doesn’t sound like a a major rain event, should be good enough at least for visiting Blackwater Falls State Park tomorrow. Batteries are well charged from the sun today and driving so it’s not a big concern for me. 🔋 Probably not a torrent going over the falls but the Blackwater Creek looked full enough when I crossed it yesterday. A year ago, we had light rain in the morning, which became light rain by afternoon. The high last year was 61 degrees. The record high of 85 was set in 1954. There was a dusting of snow in 1904.❄

In four weeks on November 8 the sun will be setting at 5:10 pm (Standard Time) in Davis WV,🌄 which is one hour, 35 minutes and 39 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2018 on that day, we had partly cloudy and temperatures between 49 and 31 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 51 and 34 degrees. The record high of 75 degrees was set back in 1975.

Looking ahead, November 🥧 is in 3 weeks, Veterans Day 🇺🇸 is a month away, Buy Nothing Day 🛍️ is in 7 weeks, Saint Nicholas Day 🎅 is in 8 weeks and Latest Sunrise of the Winter 🌄️ is in 12 weeks.

Good evening! Clear and 50 degrees at the Monongahela National Forest. There is a east-southeast breeze at 5 mph. 🍃.

It was a long drive down to West Virginia but I enjoyed it and have the most perfect campsite that I love. 😍 It’s a small site but the Mountain Laurel of Cannan Heights makes it amazing. As does the beautiful moonlit evening. The colors were absolutely specular on Mount Davis in Pennsylvania, although honestly the high point of both Pennsylvania and Maryland are a bit underwhelming. I was surprised how many Amish and Mennonite farms there were around Mount Davis and Somerset. The simple life is beautiful, although I’ve heard that the Amish don’t always use the most environmentally sensitive practices with their farm operations.

No campfire for me in West Virginia but it’s not a cold night here and the heater was fine. This being a small site, they’re wouldn’t really be room for a fire 🔥 along with a tent. Northern West Virginia though isn’t bone 🍖 dry after the rain earlier in the week – you could feel the leaf litter moisture 🍂and even see a few puddles around. Down south in the state is much drier and I get with the breeze especially in these higher elevations the authorities are concerned, especially with reckless campers. I set the table up over the fire pit and am saving the burnables for the overnight in Pennsylvania on the way home. They’ll work fine for getting the fire started back up north. Ducks 🐔that there is the fire ban down here.

I took a mostly different route down here then I did in 2015, heading down Pennsylvania 36 through Pennsylvania coal country and Punxsutawney. Yes, I did stop at Gobler’s Knob. You could see the hills of GOB left over from coal mining, 🗻 with their sometimes steep slopes and often free of anything but grasses and a few bushes. Until the 1960s, coal companies didn’t have to do any restoration of the land after doing strip mining. Even now, when you strip the to the top soil, it’s almost impossible to restore anything close to a natural cover – soil compaction, oxygenation and natural bacteria are all destroyed when you strip the land down even if you try to rebuild the surface. 🚜 Farmers know darn well that any heavy equipment run over a farm field can do enormous damage from compaction – and it can take generations of tillage and manure spreading 💩 to bring land back up to its natural fertility.

Driving through Johnstown Penna there was what appeared to be a wildfire on the hill outside of it 💨and a lot of haze. 👀 It also looked like a building 🏢 was on fire, from all the black smoke but it could have been a controlled burn. At any rate, between the fires and the coal fired power plants, 🏭 the was super hazy around there, a brown ozone haze. By the time I got down to Mount Davis outside of Somerset the haze wasn’t bad and the views were excellent.

The Somerset extension of the US 219 expressway is a major time savings over the windy Mason-Dixon Turnpike 🌉 with some really high bridges and deep rock cuts, which weren’t done when I came down here in 2015.

Maryland 495 was a nice alternative to US 219 for heading down to West Virginia. 🐮 A lot of dairy farms along there, lots of farmers harvesting crops and a few were spreading manure 💩 including one with an old fashioned belt spreader towed by an open cab old Ford Tractor. I bet he took a shower 🚿 wbn he got home.

Midday on a Wednesday, there wasn’t a lot of Pennsylvania rednecks burning trash 🔥. I did see one garage somewhere burning a pile of debris behind the shop including a tread from a truck tire and a house outside of North Cambria burning something in a burn barrel that was producing a lot of thin black smoke. 💨Amish farm outside of Somerset had two burn barrels right ou front of their door as did some of dairies in Maryland farm country.

Deer were bad in Pennsylvania. I kept seeing young road kill does along PA 36 outside of Punxsutawney, came very close to hitting a small doe in Cook Forest along the Clarion River and had to slam on the brakes again on southern Clarion County when another small one ran out into the road. They really like hiding in the shadows. I swear young doe are a bit like bullhead in some lakes. Hopefully they’ll grow up and produce some big deer.

Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 45 degrees at 4am. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around October 2nd. Southeast wind around 5 mph. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became light rain by the early hours of the morning. It became very sticky as the night progressed. It got down to 61 degrees. The record low of 22 occurred back in 1943.

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous Moon 🌔 with 97% illuminated. The moon will set at 4:36 am. The Hunter Moon 🌕 is on Saturday night with a chance of rain showers and breezy conditions up here in the high country of West Virginia. I pitched my tent so I’m ready for that – I’ll go sit by the heater in the tent if it’s truly miserable. The sun will rise at 7:22 am with the first light at 6:55 am, which is 58 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 12 hours and 36 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes and 30 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 63 degrees at 2pm. One degree above normal, which is similar to a typical day around October 9th. Maximum dew point of 47 at 12pm. Southeast wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the morning. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. It was humid. The high last year was 72 degrees. The record high of 86 was set in 1949. There was a dusting of snow in 1987.❄

Tomorrow I plan to hike in Dolly Sods. 🚶 I’m hoping the road up there won’t be too washboard. If it is, I’ll probably one back over Corridor H. Probably do one of the bigger loops, I’d like to see upwards of ten miles 🔟 hiking it tomorrow. It would be cool to also drive down to West Virginia High Peak , Spruce Knob Mountain 🗻 but time is limited and that’s quite far south if I remember right. Well see. Saturday it’s Blackwater Falls and Cannan Valley Refuge as long as it’s not pouring. If it rains, I’ll hot tent with a book 📙.

In four weeks on November 7 the sun will be setting at 5:11 pm (Standard Time),🌄 which is one hour, 36 minutes and 11 seconds earlier then tonight. That’s good to know if I decide to go West Virginia after Election Day next year. ⛺ Who knows? In 2018 on that day, we had mostly sunny, shallow fog and temperatures between 59 and 41 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 51 and 34 degrees. The record high of 75 degrees was set back in 1938.

Looking ahead, Halloween 🛥️ is in 3 weeks, Average High is 50 🍂 is a month away, Thanksgiving 🦃 is in 7 weeks, Repeal of Prohibition Day 🍺 is in 8 weeks, 7:15 AM Sunrise ⌛️ is in 2 months, Boxing Day 🥊 is in 11 weeks and National Cheese Lovers Day 🧀 is in 15 weeks.