Good morning! Happy Saturday. Finally a very nice autumn weekend! Six weeks to Beaver Moon. Sunny and 52 degrees on the East Branch of the Sacandaga River outside of Bakers Mills, South of Fox Lair. Calm wind. The dew point is 41 degrees. A bit chilly of an autumn morning but it’s going to warm up and be a beautiful autumn day in the Adirondacks and darn hot in the city. 

Today will be sunny, with a high of 83 degrees at 4pm. 14 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 65 at 6pm. Calm wind becoming north around 6 mph in the afternoon. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. The high last year was 75 degrees. The record high of 97 was set in 1895.

The sun will set at 6:50 pm with dusk around 7:18 pm, which is one minute and 50 seconds earlier than yesterday. At sunset, look for mostly clear conditions and 78 degrees. The dew point will be 65 degrees. There will be a north-northwest breeze at 6 mph. Today will have 12 hours and 4 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 58 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have increasing clouds, with a low of 61 degrees at 6am. 13 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 65 at 6pm. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening. In 2016, we had light rain in the evening, remaining overcast into the early morning. It got down to 47 degrees. The record low of 27 occurred back in 1963.

I did not get a particularly early start on my trip up to Moose River Plains, as the bus home from work was late and I didn’t have everything packed. Feeling drowsey, I decided to instead take a detour down NY 8 and camp at one of the sites south west of Fox Lair. The Fox Lair site was taken by what appeared to be a hunter, and the site right below it also appeared to be taken, so I ended up driving down farther along NY 8 until I found the campsite that is a little ways of the road, on an old routing of NY 8. I’ve camped at this site before, especially in December but I’m not a real fan of it as it’s pretty close to the road, and there is a lot of road noise. I also worry that a drunk driver could miss the turn and somehow end up crashing into the site. This site was gone or at least undersigned when I was up here in January but now it appears to be back. I don’t know if somebody stole the “Camp Here” disk or it just was that the DEC un-designates this site in the winter, so not to block off the snow plow turn-off. Hard to say. I guess I could call the DEC if I really wanted to know.

I set up camp relatively quickly and lit some firewood I had bought earlier in the evening. I was going to buy some firewood on Cedar River Road, but decided it was getting late and didn’t want to risk them not having wood so I stopped at Stewarts. Which is good, because I never made it up to Cedar River Road. I have some firewood left over from last night and I will just gather wood along Cedar River – Limekiln Lake Road once I get up to Moose River Plains today.

A bit cool — maybe in the 50s when I got camp set up — but I was moving around and the fire was warm enough, and I was so jacked up on caffeine, I stayed up to midnight. Nice fire and some good music.

NY 8 was somewhat noisy camping along, with passing trucks and vehicles roaring along this major black top road, all night long, but so be it. While after midnight the traffic dropped off, by 5 AM there was a lot of truck traffic roaring some 100 feet or less from my campsite. But I needed to stop. I was pretty tired after a long, crazy work week and was ready to get away. I didn’t want to risk hitting a deer. Maybe I should have waited until today to go north, but I wanted to maximize my time at Moose River Plains. Next time though with the early sunset, I am pretty sure I will just end up leaving the night before. At least I got an extra night of camping so I can’t complain too much.

In the winter months when many of the back country roads are closed I often camp up here, but I was shocked with my new phone that I have cell service. Yesterday, I got my phone stand and wireless Bluetooth mouse that I ordered from Ebay, combined with the Bluetooth keyboard it makes surfing the web and blogging a lot like having a miniature computer. I’m pretty good at typing with my thumb on the touch screen, but certainly for longer posts, I still prefer the good old keyboard and mouse. The one I thing I learned about the Bluetooth mouse is the off switch is easy to accidentally turn on, so I need to make sure I really store it safely in the truck.

Some color here on the East Branch, but not a lot. I expect to see a lot more up at Moose River Plains. It should be nice. I am going to break camp shortly and get on the road. 

Looking ahead, there are 6 weeks until Beaver Moon when the sun will be setting at 5:41 pm with dusk at 6:12 pm. On that day in 2016, we had mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 53 and 31 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 53 degrees. We hit a record high of 76 back in 1994.