With the Long Evenings of Darkness on my November trip with my smartphone, I’ve decide to write some short blog posts on what I’m seeing and experiencing.

The First Day I Got A Real Late Start. I knew this was going to happen as I was dog tired after work on Friday and hadn’t got a chance to pack because I thought I was going to miss my trip as I thought I was going to get stuck working this weekend and possibly next weekend.

But the boss said I had already requested and got off next week so I could have it off. My colleagues could cover for me.

Got stuff cleaned up and packed and left for Wal-Mart to pick up supplies for the first couple of days and gassed up the truck by 12:30.

The First Night I Had Planned to Camp Along Mary Smith Hill Road. But I missed the turn when heading up there as I had put Mary Smith Hill rather then Mary Smith Hill Road in the phone’s Google Maps. Ended up getting on NY 216 heading south to Roscoe, and eventually ended up in Roscoe.

Not very good cell service there either but I remembered the campsites on Russell Brook Road on the way to Trout Pond. The accessible campsite was available so I took it.

By then it was close to darkness so I quickly gathered some firewood and proceed to string up the lights. Things went well until 5:45 pm when the inverter suddenly quit due to low voltage on the deep cycle… actually 3 year old Wal-Mart Marine battery.

Every 20 or so minutes the inverter kept tripping up, so for most of evening the lights are off except for the truck cap light which is a 12 VDC light which doesn’t require the inverter to work.

Part of It Was My Fault, as rather than using the truck’s radio to play music, I was using my new clock radio to play music.

This lead to an imbalance in the starting and isolated deep cycle battery, causing the voltage regulator to cut power to keep from frying the starting battery. But most of the problem is the marine battery doesn’t have much reserve capacity left in the cold.

The inverter has dropped the voltage too low too many times on the cheap battery and it’s probably sulfured up and unable to keep much more then a surface charge.

In the Darkness Ended Up Keep Banging My Leg on the Fire Ring Grill. It hurt a bit, as somehow it stuck out just far enough to hit it everytime I walked by it in darkness and sometimes in daylight the next morning. By the next morning I had a softball sized swollen area on my left ankle.

My Camp Chair Collapsed. After a while even the best camp chairs wear out with my big fat butt flopping on them. I am a big guy. But this just added to misery of the darkness while the wind started to pick up. It got colder out and I started to wonder if I would end this trip In the morning.

Ended up going to bed by 7:30 pm. I know that sounds lame but it got chilly by evening and l wasn’t going to sit in the cold darkness next to a small smoky campfire.  Covered myself with warm sleeping bags and my bed’s comforter.

Put on some podcasts on my cellphone and retired for the night, finally falling asleep by 8:30 pm.