Search Results for “photo campsite 2 2 ” | Page 82

WINONA STATE FOREST UMP

Senior Forester Ed Sykes
NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, Region 6
7327 State Route 812
Lowville, NY 13367

July 15, 2013

Dear Mr. Sykes:

RE: WINONA STATE FOREST UMP

The Draft Winona State Forest UMP appears to be incorrect as it relates to the Facilities Inventory, subsection “Designated Campsites” on page 24:

There are three designated campsites on Winona, and their locations are as follows:

• Co. Rte. 90, 0.1 mile east of the intersection of Brown and Co Rt. 90;

• On Bargy Rd., 0.3 mile south of CCC Camp;

• On Tucker Rd., 0.4 mile east of the intersection of Bargy and Tucker Road

Based on my casual inspection of these locations, I was unable to locate these campsites. It is possible that these sites have not been mowed, reverted to woods, and/or do not have the required “Camp Here” disks pursuant to NYCRR 6 Part 190.

There is however, one relatively well-used campsite near GPS location N 43.69528 W 75.97681. This site is located roughly 300 feet south of the intersection of Bargy Road and Dog Leg Trail. It is indicated by a “Camp Here” disk, and is consists of a stone fire ring, and a hardened-with-gravel camping pad.

Many traveling New Yorkers enjoy having drive-to, “road-side campsites”, that provide minimal facilities but allow one to camp there with a pickup truck with a camper top, or a small-tow along camper, such a pop-up or tear-drop camper. Likewise, people with families appreciate being able to pull into a campsite, set up a tent, without having to carry it back to the woods. In the western Tug Hill Plateau, this is the only location that offers this essentially primitive-style camping.

The DEC should designate five (5) roadside campsites along the various roads in Winona State Forest.

These campsites should follow the design of roadside campsites in the Adirondack Park, e.g.

all campsites should be at least a quarter mile apart (at least out of eye-shot/ear-shot each other),

be properly designated with “Camp Here” disks,
set back at least 150 ft from water, trails, and other facilities; and
consist of a gravel-hardened pull off with shading from the road, and a small stone-fire ring.
No other facilities should be a provided, except for outhouses, as decided based on usage.

Standard policies under NYCRR 6 Part 190, such as requiring a camping permit for stays longer then 3 nights, should apply.

DEC operations staff should be instructed to occasionally maintain the campsites, such as mowing and litter removal, similar to what is currently done along roadsides and in parking/assembly areas. DEC Forest Rangers and law enforcement should also occasionally patrol the area, especially on Friday evenings in May and June, to discourage littering and abuse by young adults during the end of school year.

Finally, the DEC Forester should GPS the location of such campsites. and provide such data to the centralized DEC Maintenance Management System (MMS) in Albany, and provide campsite locations on maps and informational kiosks.

Many people choose roadside camping over state and private campgrounds, or primitive camping the backcountry on undesigned and undeveloped sites. Many like the privacy of roadside camping, the social nature of it, the ability to listen to music without disturbing others in the close-proximity conditions that exist in state campgrounds. By expanding roadside camping opportunities on this state land, it will expand the use of these lands in summer months.

Winona State Forest offers a lot to the visitor, including miles of hiking, mountain biking, and horse trails. The miles of roads provide scenic driving, and access to the interior forest for hunting and nature observation. The forest is a short drive to Salmon River Reservoir and Lakeview Marsh WMA which offer fishing, boating, and other opportunities. Expanding camping opportunities will enhance the public’s use of this area.

Thank you for reviewing these comments. I look forward to reviewing the revised draft Winona UMP.

Sincerely,

Andy Arthur

It Would Be Fun to Live Off the Grid All of the Time

My Part Time Off the Grid Life.

Basically during most of the weeks of the summer, I live off-the-grid in the form of camping in the Adirondack backcountry at various roadside campsites. In the back country, your pretty much up to doing it all yourself, with gear you have brought. It is a rare thing for a campsite to even have an outhouse, much less a picnic table. The best you can expect for is a fire ring. All else, you must bring in or implement yourself.

When I roadside camp, I generate my own electricity using a 800-watt inverter to power lights, my laptop, and other small appliances. The electricity, generated by the alternator, is stored in a deep cycle battery, and turned into 120 volt AC current with an inverter, much like it would work in an off-the-grid set up. While I’m basically converting gasoline to electricity, the principles are the same as solar or wind energy in an off-the-grid system. There is no power grid to keep the lights on.

In the backcountry, you have to cook your meals and clean up after without the benefits of running water or centralized electricity. You learn how to be self-reliant and learn to do without. Most campsites lack outhouses, so your stuck digging a hole in the woods and burning your toilet paper. Showers involve taking a dip in a creek, or hauling water up into woods, and taking a shower under a shower bag. Okay maybe that part isn’t as much fun.

There is no trash pickup, so you burn the burnable garbage, and bring the unburnable waste back home for recycling. If you choose to use stryofoam plates, you don’t have to worry about them sitting in a landfill for the next millennium — they burn just fine. You get to build camp fires to stay warm, for enjoyment, and to watch things burn. Fire is fun.

Daylight matters in woods, and you can here the birds and wildlife back there. There isn’t the traffic noise. It can be darn quite. In the wilderness there is non-stop beauty, as the natural world works it’s way around the cycle known as the year — as the world continues to evolve through each and every flood, hurricane, and tornado.

Traveling to the backcountry usually involves visiting a lot of out of the way places. Many beautiful small towns, and spending time in and around them. Small towns are really a world away from living in Albany, where people are connected to the land. When your in a small town in the mountains or in farmscape of Rural America, it really feels like your a world away from the city.

Someday to Live Off the Grid All of the Time.

Camping is a fun adventure in summer time, but I think it would be fun adventure to basically do all of the time. While certainly I would want to have running water, and good way to take hot showers, I really don’t want to be part of the grid, but instead be responsible to meeting my own needs by physical means. Rather then paying a distant corporation to generate electricity or pump water to my place, I’d rather be able to generate it on my own means — either by petroleum or wind, water, or solar.

Unlike some people, I do not have as much as a moral objection to the grid or even civilized society, but I think it would be a lot of fun to work directly with the technologies that power’s one life — and to live fairly minimally without all the gizmos and energy sucking gadgets that are common when people are connected to the grid, and get virtually unlimited electricity for very low prices. It is nice to have a system under one’s control — and not dependent on the grid beyond your control.

I like the idea of living off the grid, because you would get to use fire in almost every facet of your life. One of the things I like most about camping is the fires, watching the woods (and trash) burn up in the fire pit. I like cutting and splitting my own wood, and I’d rather be in control of my heat energy supply rather then sending a check off every month to some distant utility. I want to minimize my waste, then be able to burn my burnable trash, and haul my recyclables to the recycling center, rather then depend on a centralized service that promotes wasteful behavior.

I want to live in outside a small town, away from the big city. I don’t want to have to deal with big city traffic, public transit, criminals, and the sensationalization of the media on how life in the city must be.

Campgrounds are Gross

I got this book out of the library the other day titled, “The Best of Tent Camping: A guide for car campers who hate RVs, Concrete Slabs, and Loud Portable Stereos” and thought it was a perfect read until I actually opened the book and found out it was a book expounding the virtues of state campgrounds, rather then back country and roadside locations for camping.

I once stayed in a state campground. It had to be the most miserable day in my life. I really don’t need to be told by some jackbooted thug how to operate my campsite, when I must turn down the music or dim the camp lights, or otherwise restrict what I want to do. I want shoot guns at midnight, then that should be my right.

Campgrounds are tightly packed locations, versus the typical 1/4 mile plus spacing between most roadside and backcountry campsites, where you are out of eyeshot and earshot of other campers, so you are pretty much free to do what you want without restriction of the government or annoyance of others.

If you need the kind of services that campgrounds you probably shouldn’t go up to woods. Especially if your tent camping, a developed campground just seems kind of silly and wasteful. You can always burn and pack out your garbage, and there are creeks to swim in to clean yourself out.

Why I Like Using Christmas Lights at Camp

Several years ago, I got a set of LED Christmas lights that I bring almost every time I am roadside camping. I actually have several of the strings now, plus a LED rope light string that I bought this summer, that I don’t like as much although I still use it, because I paid for it, and does put out a bit of bright light.

LED Christmas light strings are great, because they put out a fair amount of direct light, yet consume minimal power. A typical string of LED Christmas lights consumes 4.5 watts, so you can pear together several strings, yet have minimal consumption of electricity — which is a big deal if your camping in woods, using a battery.

LED Christmas lights are just bright enough to keep one from tripping on various things in on the campsite, but not to take away from the campfire or darkness of woods. They give just the right light. One does not necessarily want their campsite lit up brighter then bright all evening long, while sitting next to campfire, enjoying a cold beer.

Keep the Government Off My Moose River Plains

Some of the Tea Party activist-types have been known to hold signs up that say “Keep the Government Off My Medicare”. Liberal commentators gets a kick out of that, by pointing out that Medicare is a government program and would not exist without the government. That is logical, but that is not the implied meaning — that government is something different then the public as a whole and functions the government is supposed to provide to the public.

Government doesn’t always serve the public interest. Indeed, in many cases it does not serve the public interest because of citizen apathy and because certain insiders have more power then average citizens. Laws are often written in smoke filled rooms, and are used to justify policies decades later that are not supported by the majority, but instead the small minority of special interest groups that originally got them passed.

Few examples could be clearer then Indian Lake Road, now closed at the bottom of the hill below Squaw Lake. This road went to Indian Lake prior to 2008, a beautiful wilderness lake that was great for paddling and fishing. It was closed due to Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan Act, and because the DEC wanted to “bank” 2.5 miles of Moose River Plains Road to use for then they acquired the Nature Conservancy parcels to add to the Vanderwhacker Wild Forest.

You can still walk those 2.5 miles. The road is in decent enough shape to allow you to bring a kayak back on wheels. And at least for now, you can still backpack in a campsite along the road. But then it makes Horn Lake and other places even farther back, and makes the back country even farther back. And it begs real questions: why is the government taking our public lands from us?

Tea Party folk are right to question why the government is taking things from us. the public that they should be providing things to and not taking away from us.

What Are Groupings of Primtive Tent Sites?

The Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan provides for “groupings of primitive tent sites”, that could be viewed as a loophole, or at least a solution to the 1/4 mile seperation that is normally required of “primitive tent sites”.

Small groupings of primitive tent sitesdesigned to accommodate a maximum of 20people per grouping under group campingconditions may be provided at carefullyselected locations in wild forest areas, eventhough each individual site may be withinsight or sound and less than approximatelyone-quarter mile from any other site withinsuch grouping, subject to the followingcriteria:

— such groupings will only beestablished or maintained on a site specificbasis in conformity with a duly adopted unitmanagement plan for the wild forest area inquestion;

— such groupings will be widelydispersed (generally a mile apart) andlocated in a manner that will blend with thesurrounding environment and have aminimum impact on the wild forestcharacter and natural resource quality of thearea;

— all new, reconstructed orrelocated tent sites in such groupings will beset back a minimum of 100 feet from themean high water mark of lakes, ponds,rivers and major streams and will be locatedso as to be reasonably screened from thewater body to avoid intruding on the naturalcharacter of the shoreline and the publicenjoyment and use thereof.

In a strict constructionist view of this language, one could claim that this only would apply to campsites specifically allowed to be use by groups of people, as permitted by the DEC. But also could it apply to small “groupings” of campsites along lakes or ponds, that might otherwise not comply with the 1/4 mile of seperation.

View Larger Map

Therefore, if you have a grouping of 3-4 “individual” campsites, in a group setting (like on Mountain Pond), you would still have fewer then 20 people camping in a “group camping conditions”. While not an ideal situtation, it does seem to comply with the letter of the Adirondack State Land Master Plan, even if the most radical elements in park might not apprechiate that reading by state land unit management plan authors.

Unlike the language relating to individual primitive tent sites, there is no absolute language that requires a specific seperation, although the preference for these groupings is clearly one mile apart. If you had multiple groupings, out of eyeshot and earshot, let’s say a 1/4 mile apart, would it be consistent with the Adirondack State Land Master Plan?

In addition, the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan provides that in some language that allows tent sites for reasons of “severe terrian constraints” to violate the 1/4 mile seperation.

1. The structures andimprovements listed below will beconsidered as conforming to wildernessstandards and their maintenance,rehabilitation and construction permitted:

— primitive tent sites below 3,500feet in elevation that are out of sight andsound and generally one-quarter mile fromany other primitive tent site or lean-to:

(i) where physical and biologicalconditions are favorable, individual unitmanagement plans may permit theestablishment, on a site-specific basis, ofprimitive tent sites between 3,500 and 4,000feet in elevation, and,

(ii) where severe terrainconstraints prevent the attainment of theguideline for a separation distance ofgenerally one-quarter mile betweenprimitive tent sites, individual unitmanagement plans may provide, on asite-specific basis, for lesser separationdistances, provided such sites remain out ofsight and sound from each other, beconsistent with the carrying capacity of theaffected area and are generally not less than500 feet from any other primitive tent site;

Many of the campsites that currently violate the 1/4 mile seperation along roads, could be consistent with the Adirondack State Land Master Plan, if this reading of the language of APSLMP was adopted. It might rankle some of the more extreme elements in the park, but it seems consistent both with pratice and the letter of the law.

Still Recovering After Vacation

I really like Northwest Pennsylvania. It’s so wild and different then anything in New York State, without all of the restrictions applied on the land and people of a liberal state like New York. All things rugged and back country are vastly different then in Albany.

Time seemed unlimited on vacation. Eight days and nights sure seemed like a long time. Every morning lighting the cook stove, cooking up breakfast on styrofoam plates, packing up the gear, tearing down camp, and heading out for the day, exploring truck trails and wild landscapes. Set up campsite, turn on Christmas lights, build a campfire, and burn the day’s garbage, while listening to country music with my cowboy hat on.

In contrast, the land of work is vastly different. It’s setting an alarm clock, getting up, making breakfast on an electric stove, and catching the bus to work, and sitting in an office all day. Then come home, cook dinner, wash dishes, and sort the trash for recycling. Walk down to the park or the library. No opporunties to burn anything.

Man cities, and my urban reality in the state that best represents liberal statism, sucks.

In eight days, I managed to burn through 86.8 gallons, travel 1490 miles, and got 17.0 MPG. Those truck trails sure make Big Red burn a lot of gas. And I sure need the $310 to cover the cost of gas, plus the other $90 for beer, food, and supplies. Hell, even the styrofoam plates and paper towels aren’t free.

I also realize that I won’t be up for such an adventure for quite a while. It’s a mix of money and just getting the time off, but the reality is I probably won’t be back in Pennsylvania for a while. Somehow, trips to Adirondacks don’t seem so far or exciting, as Northwest Pennsylvania.

After looking forward to this trip, all that is left is some pictures, burn out tin cans for recycling, and the hang-over made up of memories.

Andy Arthur.org

Search Results for: photo campsite 2 2