summer

July

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July is the hottest month of the summer. It’s the month when the school children are out from school and the legislature has left Albany for the year. Hot and humid, but wonderful summer days upon us, as we enjoy long nights in the summer haze.

Campsite with Views

There won’t be any real cold days in this month. Rainy days are a rarity, although one always to be on the watch for the heavy thunderstorms that often come by afternoon. Humidity will be high, one things warm up by mid-day. Regardless, with long days, one can get up, hike up a mountain, break by early afternoon, and then enjoy nice nights. We will enjoy the wild blueberries and the wild raspberries as spend time outdoors.

Blueberries Along the Trail

July is the month when we celebrate the birth of our nation with Independence Day. Always a long weekend, it will be a nice one. We will enjoy fireworks, both legal and illegal, lighting them off, into the summer skies. We will watch the fireflies as they fill the fields at night with their flickers of light.

It will be an enjoyable month.

The warmest month is upon us, when we celebrate our country's independence and enjoy many delightful summer past-times.

August

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The final month of summer has arrived. It’s the warmest and most mature month, and meadows run their wildest. The nights are not as long as previous months, and while it’s often hot and humid in the day, the nights start to have little hints of a fall chill that’s certain to come next month.

August is the time of Altamont fair and many people’s vacations. It will be time of sitting out and soaking up the sun, of long days out in the canoe, and climbing mountains in the early morning. They’ll be nights sitting around the campfire drinking beer and whisky, watching flames as the burn towards the sky.

Swimming Hole

August can be a lazy month. The last of the summertime season, the last time we are laid back before our youth go to school, and before things get more serious at work as people’s vacations end. The heat makes some outdoor activities challenging, so we choose to lay back.

There will be plenty of warm days in September, but it won’t be as much summer as the month of August will be. It will be different. September will see many of the final harvests of the year, our society’s agricultural bounty, and the signs of fall. Much hope and sadness we enter that month.

June

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The first official month of summer is upon us, with the Summer Solstice occurring on June 21st. It is the month when summer activities get fully underway, when the crops and gardens are planted, with primary and secondary schools recess for the summertime.

Creek

By the 21st of the month, we will have seen the longest day come and go for the year. Sunsets will occur as late as 8:37 PM, with it not being totally dark until after 9:10 PM most nights. The long summer nights will be a pleasure.

Camping

Folks will camp, they will fish, they will picnic and enjoy the beautiful weather. The wildflowers will cover the fields, first the daisies, then the black-eyed susans. We will explore the hay fields looking for Juneberries, those ever so small, but wonderfully tasting “wild strawberries”.

Black Eye Sussie

One of three months of wonderful summer weather, there will be much to enjoy as nature starts to mature into it’s full born of beauty of summer time.

May

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The month of May is upon once us again. It’s the first full month of spring, and it’s also the month of the unofficial start of summer, also known as Memorial Day Weekend. The month starts out with the green of early spring well under way, and leaves us with the signs of a spring maturing, and summer well under way.

Pasture and Field

There will be warm days and cool days in May. The days will continue to grow longer and longer, until we reach the end of the month, and almost feel like the lengthening days are too long too be true. They will prove to be true, once the end of June comes and we start to see maturing summer work it’s way towards August, and ultimately the fall.

Farms and gardeners will prepare and plant their crops. Many will work outdoors, soaking up the beautiful warming weather of spring time. They will enjoying the changing outdoors, that will ultimately in four months bring fall time bounty. Things will start to growth, and the natural world will come alive again.

Power

May is a month of barbecues, parades, camping out under the stars, and much beauty this month. Much to enjoy, much to do that wasn’t possible when things where colder and not nearly as green. The days will past quickly as we work ourselves into the first true month of summer with June, but it still sure will be nice.

Wider

So enjoy this beautiful first month of what hopefully will be many months with long and beautiful nights outdoors.

What Ever Happened to New Blog Version?

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In late April, I mentioned I was working on a new version of my blog that would use PostGIS, and later changed my mind to using MySQL GIS Extension. A big part of the blog would be to mix content types together by geographical location – so that pictures, maps, content and stories about a particular piece of land would be grouped together, rather then spread out on increasingly disordered different parts of the blog.

The project never was abandoned but it kind of got put into recess when the summer and camping season got underway. I certainly did not want to s tragedy inside, screwing around code, and doing a lot of testing to implement which is a total re-write of the blog code, connected with a vastly different MySQL database then the existing code.

I have pretty much completed out my vision of what the new blog will look like, and the PHP code I wrote to convert over the data is done. I don’t expect to create any new features for it that are not already envisioned, but at the same time, not all the needed code is written.

Once the snows come and it’s cold out, I will spend more time working on the new blog code, safely tucked away in a seperate folder on my laptop’s webserver, and backed up on the secondary hard drive. While the new blog may be 6-8 months behind schedule, I will happy to get away from the somewhat broken and certainly outdated code that currently props up the existing blog – some of which dates back 2005 or earlier, when things were a lot different/

In the mean time, I am working on more new daily content, and make sure any day I don’t have anything new or interesting to post the blog, that we will at least have re-runs of some of the interesting content of days past. I am also going to look for new and interesting content using GIS data to produce Google Maps and other things of interest.

As Summer 2012 Fades Away

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The endless summer has shown it must come to an end. I woke up the other day at Moose Plains, and the temperature was only 46 degrees out. It was a chilly morning out, but only a symbol of what is to come as we fade into winter. Daylight is rapidly dropping every day.

Labrador Pond

Probably it would not be as big of deal for me, if I didn’t have to work so much during the fall. But I expect this fall to be a very busy season, where I won’t get to spend much time in the wilderness, camping, hiking, and spending time outdoors until mid-November. You know, I got to work and make money for the toys. And by mid-November, the winter will be well among us.

North Fork Mountain

There is nothing to stop to winter from returning. And as soon as winter comes, winter will be on its way out, as we move back towards April and ultimately mid-May when things finally green up and the endless days of summer return once again. It’s the cycle of life.

Inside the Pine Creek Gorge

… It just seems like summer is much too short.

The Gates Are Open! The Gates Are Open!

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For roughly six months out of the year — from the first significant snow storm until the end of mud season, the gates to many of the most popular roads in the Adirondacks are closed to prevent idiots from getting stuck, and to keep the backcountry roads from getting too torn up.

Gate at Otter Brook Bridge

Yet, that season has come to an end. Mud season is now just history. Okay, maybe the roads are somewhat sloppy from recent rains, but at least now the opening of the gates marks the start of Adirondack Summer 2012.

Otter Brook Bridge

So many adventures are ahead. So many summer time memories to be created as we proceed through summer. Most places in the park now are open, with so many chances to get away and freely explore whereever and whenever we want.