Happy New Year!

Wishing you all a happy, safe, fun, prosperous, exciting, relaxing, fruitful, stimulating, dry, wet, snowy, sunny, lucky 2008! May it be the year you want it to be.

South Beach

A quick note about my visit a couple days back to the infamous South Miami Beach. I just walked around for a coupe hours and took a lot of photos of all the crazy colored building and the very fine beach. I was really quite warm, even at this time of year. The beach is really a sight, because it seems to stretch endlessly, and is packed with people. It's small percentage that seem to use the beach to play, though. The vast majority may as well be taking a nap.

Not much else to say really- it would have been nice to have more time and talked my way in to a volleyball game, but oh well - another time, I guess. Enjoy the pics..

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Dos dias en los Cayos

After getting out of the Everglades, I bounced into a car with my parents, sister, bro-in-law and two cousins to head to the Florida Keys for a couple days. There, we met up with another Columbian cousin that I have not seen for 14 years! It was a good couple days.

The highlight for me was going snorkeling. The snorkeling itself was not all that great, since it turned a bit cloudy and the water was very choppy. Thus the reef was a little dim and the swimming was a bit difficult. I think the most gratifyng thing to me was simply that I made it. Fifteen or twenty years ago, my family was in Key West, and we went on a snorkeling trip. I got very seasick, but eventually mustered the energy to get in the water, but then chickened out at swimming across the blackness to the reef by myself. Thus, gratifying that this time around, everything went much better.

The boat was pretty neat also. We were on a 30-40ft catamaran, and around sunset, they cut the motor and actually sailed the thing for a while. I like the cruisy, easy feeling of a sailboat, so I really enjoyed that part.

The Keys are not quite what I remember. There are not as many beaches as I recall, the water is absolutely flat. Like a pool out there on both sides. I think if I came back here, it would be fun to bike the 100 miles from Florida to Key West. Or sail it - I did not see that many sailboats out there, but it seems like a great place for it.

Update: A couple pictures of the sunset at sea...

Out of the business

I am officially out of the alpaca business. A deal to sell the remaining animals was completed last Wednesday, Dec. 19th. It is good that we got some money for them, they went to a good home, and that is one more continuing expense I don't have to worry about. But still, it mostly makes me sad. I do really like those animals. I guess, in the end, they were just too smart for us. It is hard to treat them as commodities when they all clearly have personalities, emotions and intelligence. They'll never replace the family dog, mind you, but I think it's much the same as people who get attached to horses.

I know it is the right decision, though. To have those animals as a business venture was not a lifestyle that was good for us, or for me by myself. The business-work: marketing ,networking, bookkeeping and planning - was all rather unpleasant and extremely time-consuming. To afford a place to accomodate them required us to live a distance from our peers that made it hard to develop good friendships. It seems people really won't/can't travel 30 minutes to see friends on a regular basis. I made the effort, but getting home at 8 or later several times a week was taking its toll.

Anyway, those days are over now. I'm sad about it, but also relieved. And the alpaca money will allow me to pay the mortgage and extend my travels a little longer. I feel like a poetic quote or saying would be appropriate here, but my mind is coming up empty. Well, okay - that's it then. Here's some of the better pictures taken over the years...

The Everglades

"I urge every discontented man to take a trip through the Everglades. If it does not kill him, it will surely cure him" - unnamed, 1800s Everglades explorer

I spent three days exploring the southern portion of the Everglades. One day by car, and two in a canoe. It is not the place TV led me to believe over the years. For one, is is mostly marsh, not swamp. For another, a huge section of the park is a shallow bay, riddled with mangrove islands (hammocks) and serpentine channels.

The Everglades is not a terribly picturesque place, because vast swaths are relatively homogeneous. By my looking at it, sawgrass and mangrove constitute 99% of the biomass in the park. And for animals, if you like insects, fish, and birds - this is a great place for you. But still, I wound up with a lot of pictures, and the canoe trip was pretty neat.

I paddled 7 miles through mangrove swamp and interior bays to Hell's Bay chickee. The beginning part was very tight, involving a lot of caroming off the sides of the channel and ducking overhanging branches. It's a real maze in there, with over 160 markers in just 4 miles. That actually went pretty quick though, and I made it to the chickee pretty early in the day. So of course, I got back in the canoe and set off-trail to the west, looking for a passage to whitewater bay. My only map made it look possible, but there were no markers now, just a tiny 1" square section of the park service brochure, my GPS and compass. I did not make it to Whitewater Bay before I had to turn around to make it back to camp before dark, but I felt pretty confident I had found the trail. This assurance cost me 2.5 hours of paddling and added 5 more miles to the trip log...

The night was uneventful. Beautiful and a bit windy, but very calm and quiet. The moon was super-bright, I did not need a flashlight. And after it went down, it was so clear that even starlight was enough to make out the important features. Sometimes, when the wind would gust strongly, I could feel the chickee shudder, but this was the most unnerrving thing to happen. No alligators climbing on the deck, no canoe drifting away.

Come morning, I felt re-energized and confident, so I decided to take the alternate route back that I found, even though it invloved a decent hike to the car at the staritng point. I did find Whitewater Bay, less than 0.5 mile from where I turned around the day before. Then the trip got more dificult. The route back involved finding two small passages from larger bays to smaller ones. My map and GPS check me roughly on track, but the mangrove forest all looks the same and distances aross the bay are really hard to judge. So seeing the passages from far away is almost impossible. For example, the passage from Coop Bay to Coop Pond I did not see until I was 20 yards away. It is maybe 10 yards in width, and Coop Bay is 2 miles in diameter!

Furthermore, it was windy, which made the open water parts a bit choppy, which also makes paddling harder. Fortunately, I did not have to paddle upwind much. I learned this trip that when by yourself in a canoe, you are travelling in a big wind vane, and it can be really diffiuclt to turn into the wind, or paddle a course that is not downwind. But everything worked out well, with no more than 1 miles of wrong turns and search patterns. Of couse, there was an alligator sitting right where I intended to beach the canoe, but I found a close-by alternate landing. A quick lunch, then I hiked the 6 miles back to the car and returned to the hostel.

I thought it was a good adventure, and a decent accomplishment, since I haven't paddled a canoe in 15 years, only for an hour, and only the one time in my life. Next time though, I think I definitely should bring the fishing pole...

Cooling off . . . in a swamp.

siiggggh.. OKay - I'm quite a bit calmer now about the mess in CO. Non-ideal situation, but we've done all we can at this point. New eviction date is Jan. 2 now, so if there are no more surprises, we can live with that..

I've traveled to south Florida, and will stay at the Everglades Hostel for a couple days. Then, I'll rent a canoe and paddle into the swamp for an overnight trip - hopefully staying at a chickee. Back out the night of the 19th! Hopefully with a good story and some cool pictures...

What's a chickee? From the Everglade NPS website:

"Chickees are located along interior rivers and bays where no dry land exists. They are elevated 10 foot x 12 foot / 3 m x 3.7 m wooden platforms with roofs, usually constructed on open water, well away from mangrove trees. A narrow walkway leads to a self-contained toilet. You'll need a free-standing tent, since stakes or nails are not allowed."

oh, Bloody 'ell...

It's ON, now!!!

So far I have not ranted about the fact that my tenants have been complete deadbeats! Not a dime since they signed the lease and moved in, in mid October! Well, we thought eviction was going along, despite some delays and bureaucratic nonsense. Well, eviction day arrives, and it turns out the property manager has not done her job and made all the necessary arrangements. So the sheriff cannot evict tenants, and won't come back until Jan. 9!

This is just too much. selfish liars, laziness, incompetence, maybe some craziness. We've been nice guys to the tenants and the PM - everybody has had multiple chances and lots of time to deal with the reality of life and be responsible, but it's time to kick some a$$ and take some names. We can't be having this, and if people won't be responsible and live up to their agreements, then we've no choice but to basically tell them exactly what to do and when and stand over their shoulder to make sure they do it. I hate doing this, I really don't like to have to go into this mode. Everywhere I go though, it seems the world makes me do it. My last two jobs forced me to do it on a routine basis, my business on the side made me do it, now being a landlord is making me do it.

Why the heck doesn't anybody do things with respect and responsibility? I always have to be yelling or standing in people's faces to get them to do what they said they would, or answer my questions, or otherwise give me some regard. And I always ask nicely first. My default is still to trust people until they do me harm in some way.

Fine. Alright then, have it your way, punk ba$&#%ds! You want to play that way, then bring it. I didn't start this fight, I don't want it, but I'll finish it.

BTW - Thanks to all my friends and family for NOT being this way. The fact that I can trust you to be stand-up, reasonable people makes you exceptional, in my experience.

NC Coast Trip photos

Photos from my trip to the NC Coast.

Kayak adventure! (a short story)

After a few days of bookkeeping and chores (yes, even a tramp still has to work once in a while), I set out with my friend Dan for a 2 night camping trip in coastal NC. First stop was Bear Island (this was originally a typo, there have never been bears there) in Hammock Beach State Park. This time of year, the only way to get there is by canoe/kayak. So we rented a tandem kayak and paddled over. Thanks to the folks back in CO for the loan of dry-bags and a life jacket!

Well, it was low tide, so nothing looked like the map, we got stuck on sand bars 3 times, probably paddled 2 extra miles, and did not make it to the intended campsite. But we still made it there before dark and we had the entire uninhabited island to ourselves (not counting the animals). The sunset was gorgeous! Pics to come soon...

After a "late" night of double solitare (pretty complex game, actually), we got up the next morning and paddled the rest of the way to our original campsite. We could make it in now because it was high tide. After some exploring, shell and trash collecting (Dan was a bit annoyed, I think, at all the litter), we made a bit of a hasty exit, since the tide was going out and we did not want to get stuck again.

Before heading back to return the kayak, we decided to paddle out around the bend and into the Atlantic a short ways. Well, we did not get too far before the swells picked up and the waves were getting choppy and unprectable. Not big, but the is no better way to ruin a trip than by capsizing a river kayak in the ocean, even if it is only 50 yards to the beach. We turned back.

Well, now we were in for it. It turns out that the Bouge inlet that drains the waterways between the mainland and the islands here develops a non-trivial current while the tide is shifting. Enough so that one person paddling alone is only enough to hold position. Gluttons for punishment, we still decided on a longer course back to the kayak launch, and then regretted it for the next 3 hours. Man, that was hard work! But eventually we got far enough away from the inlet and enough time went by that the current subsided and we pulled into the launch beach tired, but happy and satisfied.

The next night we camped and hiked in the Croatoan National Forest, but it was relatively unremarkable. Mostly we just talked and debated all sorts of things, including if we could finish a marathon without training, and within the allowed time. I think after the 12 mile hike today, we are pretty sure one would have to do at least a little bit of conditioning.

Changing the scenery

Yesterday I packed up my truck again and headed south. Of course I forgot several non-essential items. I figure my absent-mindedness will just strip me of stuff until I am down to a small enough set of things that I really, truly need. I drove to Raleigh, NC to visit my friends Dan and Andie. Here I'll stay for a little bit, and plot my travel south to Florida for Christmas, as well as try to do some bookkeeping, repair, and other chores

Along the way I stopped in Colonial Williamsburg and the Great Dismal Swamp. In Williamsburg, I had heard there is really good beer, but it seems noon was too early for the tavern to be tapping the keg. I did see this really weird looking tree, where all the leaf-bearing branches seem to come from nodes at the end of the structural branches. Anybody know what it is? Between there and the swamp, I drove by some shipyards and a big coal field. I like the way the picture I snapped from the car came out.


Now, the Great Dismal Swamp did not really live up to any of it's names. In December of a drought year, at least, it is not particularly dismal, swampy, or impressively large. It's pretty dense and scrubby forest, with some very murky canals cut through it. In summer, when it is wet and hot, with flies and mosquitoes and snakes everywhere - okay, I can imagine how it got the name. I climbed a tree and took a panorama photo, then walked out and drove the rest of the way to Raleigh.

Geek Photography

A while back, I read of some advanced camera systems that would take data from a series of images to create a single image with extended dynamic range (think night scenes where the lights are not saturated or suffer from blooming). Yesterday, I learned from a Popular Science article that this technology is available to all digital photographers now, and some geeky types have written free software to do the image manipulation. Hooray! I don't have to write it myself - I just get to play! Posted below is my first attempt at making a HDR (high dynamic range image) Actually, the 32-bit image file looks better, this photo is my best looking one from 10 minutes or so of trial and error. Also posted is my best conventional shot of the same frame. Some flaws, such as the leaves blurred due to motion between frames, but in principle it seems to work. The sky is blue - not white, and the detail in the shady yard can be seen also. Lemme know what you think.

I also tried the technique on a fire last night, and got a neat result. See?:

A show of force

Hi again everybody!

I am still in the same place, and have not done much to write about. I'm having a great time though. I played some soccer, been jogging a few times, a 23 mile bike ride yesterday - all feels totally luxurious to have the time to do! I went to see the money factory known as the Bureau of Engraving and Printing - I've been curious about that since childhood, as we used to drive by it every time we visited DC.

Today I decided to make myself a bit useful today and give the upper body a workout. So, I got the "macho" and smashed up a 8' X 6' concrete slab. See the before and after picture (out-of-focus, but you get the idea). That was fun - it's always satisfying to do something like that and be able to see the change you made.

It's about time to start plotting my next adventure - hopefully I can find a way to swing a canoe/kayak trip...

Washington, DC

My how time flies when you are being lazy! I've just been hanging out here in DC with my friends. Trying to be helpful here and there, but mostly, I'm just enjoying their company, heated shelter, and comfortable guest beds. Papa Smurf, the truck, is running again, but the repair of the fuel pump assembly cost me a serious chunk of change. My first major stop to work may not be that far in the future. I did get out of the house to go do a bit of museum visiting yesterday.

I went to the Washington Monument, the Holocaust Museum, the natural history museum, and the botanical gardens. the Holocaust Museum made me feel nervous and uneasy just walking in the door, but the parts I saw were not very graphic. It was more symbolic and reflective a place. Even at that, it is definitely an experience that helps renew one's perspective. After that, experience, I went to look at things living. The Natural History museum has an exhibit of nature photography that displays some really amazing shots. And the botanical gardens is, well, just a really amazing garden. The light was flat, and my camera was acting up a bit, but I got few shots that I thought look okay.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Limping to a stop

Well, it seems fate wants me to stop here in DC for a little bit. To sum up, my cell phone is dying, my truck has broken down, and I've lost all my tent stakes. Here's the story:

Like I said, I felt like it was time to go and head into town, and so I did, but it was still early enough in the day that I thought I'd stop my a CostCo on my way into DC - cause that's where I bought my phone (broken button and charge only lasts 6 hours now...). Okay, fine - found a CostCo and was directed to a T-mobile store in a nearby mall. On my way to the Mall, my truck sputters out and the engine dies. Acts like it's running out of fuel. After it stops and I couldn't restart it, I fortunately saw a repair shop across the intersection. Those are friendly guys, at Craven Tire and Auto, and they agreed to grab a tow strap and their truck and tow me out of the three-lane DC suburban road in the middle of rush hour. But when they got there - the truck started! Hooray! Until 50 yards later when it dies again.

Now, at this point, the fellow is convinced it's just out of gas, so they give me a lift to a gas station to get some gas. This takes 20 minutes, because of traffic. But when we get back and put the gas in the tank, it still doesn't go. It just coughs and sputters and dies out again. Bugger. Well, they relented and conceded there is something else going on, and tow it back to the shop, where it will get examined today to see what's going on.
Again I was lucky I was close enough to my friends' house that they were able to come give me a ride the rest of the way! Otherwise, I would have been spending the night in the garage parking lot. Thanks Blake and Marcia! So, I made it here, with a little help, and now I'll see what it will take to repair all this stuff. I am glad and fortunate to have a place to stop for a little while.

Shenandoah National Park

Shenandoah National Park is a beautiful place, that seems to have three major hallmarks: panoramic mountain vistas, waterfalls, and deer. The deer are everywhere, and almost totally fearless. They will not run unless you are approaching them directly, and even then, not until you are ~10ft away. The forest is beautiful, and even at this late a date, there was still quite a bit of color in the leaves. I did not see any black bears, but the rangers say there are quite a few out here. I think this would be a great place to visit earlier in the season, but right now it is more like winter than fall up there. Most campgrounds and visitor centers are closed.

I cut my trip to the park short, and the picture of my campsite should show you why. I had intended to go out for a 2-night backpacking trip. I have gear for cold, and I have gear for wet, but cold and wet at the same time - no thanks. I mean, really, if given the choice between spending the 14 hour night alone in the woods, wet and in sub-freezing temps, or warm and dry, and in the company of friends, who really is going to choose the former? I suppose I could have stayed in the campground, but at $17/night, I felt it was time to go.
I did take a couple hikes before I left, probably 7 miles or so, in total. One of my hopes for this trip was to go places people don't usually, and I think that includes when as much as where. So, standing at the bottom of Dark Hollow Falls, at 8am in the morning, in the middle of a snow shower - I think that counts. It was a good moment.

The blog of too many photos

Too many pictures! I know, but I like them all and want to share!

After spending the night at a truck stop, I was up early on Monday to drive to the Abbey of Gethsemani. A picturesque Kentucky farm and monastery. Thomas Merton? you guys heard of him? Anyway, it was a good place to reflect, think some dep thoughts, then buy some cheese for my friends in DC.

Off I went next to Lexington, where I saw a marker at Phoenix Park, with of course, a statue of a man on a camel on top?!? The pedestral also marked the direction North, and said it was the "zero marker". Got me what's going on, I just thought it incongruous, and I like camels...

Then on to Natural Bridge state park, which is an absolutely beautiful place - I'm very glad I checked it out. It was cloudy and rain/drizzling most of the morning while I was hiking around, which made the lighting difficult, but I got some good pics anyway. The surrounding forest is tall and varied, with Hemlocks, oaks, maples, pines, rhododendrons the whole gamut. It's like a little temperate rain forest micro-climate in there - I'm kind of glad it was raining, since it added to the mood. The bridge itself is hard to picture (I've used my photo of a postcard trick again), but I got a few. I made sure to include a couple of the top, to prove to all that I am being careful.

Bonus of showers at the campground, so I cleaned up my camp and myself, then headed across the highway to Koomer Ridge campground, were I spent the night before packing up and heading east.



Two more stops before taking a break in DC for Thanksgiving: New River Gorge National River, then Shenandoah National Park.

Mammoth Cave

I took two tours and spent 6 hours underground, and Mammoth Cave really lives up to its name. The thing is just big, everything about it is big. 50ft tubes, 200ft pits/domes, 367 miles of explored passageways, underground rivers (did not get to see these), 60 ft hills. It's really, really big! And, in many places -really small. We went through some passageways as narrow as my shoulders, and the tours pass by many side passages that look like human mouse-holes. Of course, pictures down there without a tripod are pretty much a futile effort, so I photographed some postcards for display here, to show you a couple of the neater features of the cave. It's quite a sight, and well worth the tour prices, should anybody reading ever find themselves in the neighborhood.

Also, I'm pretty sure that animal in the woods is a screech owl. This recording I found sounds similar, but is still not quite the same. Last night one sounded off really near the campsite, loud!, like a car horn. Seconds later I heard the little girl in the adjacent campsite start crying...

A couple more days here in Central Kentucky, then I'll head East some more...

Western Kentucky

First off, I have to give a big THANK YOU to Arleen Amato for letting me crash at her pad Wed. night. A hot shower , steak dinner, and free laundry facilities was was greatly appreciated.

In Paducah, I stopped at the National Quilt Museum, which is a pretty neat place to spend a couple hours. Here, quilt making has been raised to an art form, and there are some really original and intricate examples housed there. All the colors was a bit of sensory overload for me, after all this time in the woods.

The next day, I bee-lined it for Mammoth Cave National Park, where I am as I write this. MC is a pretty neat park, but to get inside the cave, the only way is to pay for a tour. So I spent Thursday and Friday in the backcountry part of the park, which is beautiful in it's own right, if a bit soggy in places. One cool thing I'd never really seen before is a little two car ferry, which has been installed in two places instead of a bridge to cross the river.

I found out in this trip that deer have an alarm call - it sounds kind of like a cross between a dog bark and a bird call. I saw a deer bounding away from my campsite making this really odd sound. I'd heard it before and had no idea what it was, so I'm glad to be able to match it to it's source. There is something else out there in the woods that makes a sound that's kind of like a police siren, but imagine it coming out of a bird. 'Woot, woot, wooohhhooooo' It doesn't sound like an owl - it's more shrill. Really kind of disconcerting to hear that in the middle of the night, then all the dogs in a two miles radius going nuts over it. (Campsite was only 0.5 mile or so from the park boundary).

Backpacking by myself with such short days is not really all that fun. A lot of time to self-entertain out there, and the nights at this point are over 12 hours long. Maybe it would not be so bad if my brain had more than one channel playing, and it wasn't all re-runs.

What about the cave? That deserved it's own post, which I'll do tomorrow, after my second tour...

Even more camping!

Yep, even more camping. A few more relatively uneventful days in the woods. I stopped at the Trail of Tears State Park in MO for a night, then spent two nights in a shutdown campground at Lake of Egypt, Illinois.

Trail of Tears park sits at a site used as a crossing for the Cherokee's forced march to Oklahoma. There is a small memorial site here which people seem to come and place tribute items on. I saw a dreamcatcher and a staff with several items tied to it placed there.

The campsite is not as good as it looks on the map. Yes, it's next to the river, but at a boat landing, and with railroad tracks in-between. I got one sort of neat picture of a train at night as it blew by. There is a pretty regular flow of barges (you thought a coal train looked like a lot of stuff - a coal barge is really impressive!), and nearby dredging operation keeps the air filled with the hum of distant diesel engines. The surrounding woods are realy nice though - lots of bluffs, gullies and hillsides make for a pleasant walk in the woods. I biked all around the park and took a couple short hikes to the tops of some bluffs. That's a really big river!

The next day I was undecided where I wanted to stay and eventually settled on a "decomissioned" campground at Lake of Egypt in southern Illinois (savage Silukie territory!) The highlight for me here was finding a small downed cedar tree that was just right for making a smashing walking staff from. Tried fishing again in the nearby lake, but all I caught was a nap. At least this time I could see the bobber moving when the fish took my worms.

It is positively spooky out here in these woods by myself. Last night I got here just before sundown, so was pretty much totally unfamilar with what's outside a 20 yard radius of my camp. A distant tunderstorm was generating flashes of light, the wind rustling through the trees, and my mind was racing with all kinds of crazy scary stuff. I did note that most of it was learned stuff though - vampires, ghosts, Jason - I didn't make that stuff up on my own. Even the houselights I could see through the trees and across the lake did not help ease my nerves. I think it's this sort of experience that has generated all the ghost and monster stories over the ages. I think maybe it is just part of human nature to get spooked sometimes. It made me think of the forest animals like deer - where there really IS a monster out there waiting to get them. The stories they must tell! I don't blame them for running like crazy when they see us...

Taum Sauk Mountain

Now I'm in Cape Girardeau, MO, after a day at Taum Sauk Mountain State Park. A pretty nice place, with a really good panorama observation deck. Taum Sauk Mountain is the highest point in MO, at the dizzying elevation of 1772 ft. After getting over the vertigo, I hiked down to the Mina Sauk Falls and the Devil's Tollgate, which of course, I ate lunch on top of (see big rocks below). I make a personal appearance in my blog this time - to show you I am none the worse for the wear so far...









Using my cell-phone and a wireless hotspot to do some catching up w/ people and post this blog, then I might be relatively quiet for a few days until I wander down to Paducah, KY.

Gonna camp by the Mississippi river tonight, then move on into Illinois.

Camping on the Current River

The Ozark National Scenic Riverways are a beautiful place. I stayed two nights at a campground here, and was the only person there (well, that stayed all night, anyway).
It is a very short hike to Blue Springs, which is one of the most gorgeous places I've ever seen. That's where most of the pictures came from - they do not do it justice. Apparently, the Native American's called it the "Spring of the Summer Sky", which I think a better name, since in the summer the sun should pass almost directly overhead. That would really make the colors pop. For the number crunchers: 87 million gallons/year (~200 gallons/minute? -looks like more than that..), 310 ft deep!
Now, perhaps the more interesting story is the one I have no pictures of. I arrived around 5. The first fisherman arrived around 6. I struck up a conversation with him and he said he and a few fellows were going to go "gippin' for suckers". I found out the "gip" is a trident-looking spear, and the "sucker" is some bony, bottom-feeding rock/roughfish. I think it was this one. 2 hours later, there are 8 guys, 5 trucks, 2 generators, a 5ft high fire, a two-well deep fryer and several dozen fish in the campground! Since I know how to speak "good-ol boy" and am curious, I am invited over to partake. They spear the fish from flat-bottomed boats, fillet-'em on the boat landing, then deep fry them in the campground, while gossiping and joking around. Trash? No problem - into the fire it goes. Styrofoam plates, aluminum cans, even the deep fryer oil (which was on it's last use). They do this twice a week through the whole season, which goes until Jan. 15. Quite a tradition they have! The fish was pretty good too. Went to bed stuffed!
Coldest nights yet. 27 degrees at 7:30 the first morning - 32 degrees this morning. On to Taum Sauk Mountain, then East for hopefully some warmer nights (not crossing my fingers, though). I think I'm getting better at sealing the mummy bag, cause I have not ben as cold as the first night out...