2025-10-08 12:00:00
Trip: 55
Nights: 185-186
The government may be closed but the Park Rangers are working without getting paid. The two Rangers at the ranger station at Otter Creek Campground at about mile 60 on the Blue Ridge Parkway were in good spirts as I checked in, and I thanked them for being there to keep the campground open.
Otter Creek is the lowest point on the Blue Ridge Parkway, only about 600 feet above sea level. You will be 3000 feet up rather quickly driving either north or south from the campground. We arrived on Friday evening, about 30 minutes ahead of friends that were camping in the neighboring campsite. Otter Creek was renovated recently. The asphalt is in great shape and the paved campsites are level-ish. We had a creek side campground, although the water was mot moving at a speed to produce any sound. After our traditional campsite arrival dinner of WaWa subs that we picked up on the way, we retired to the campfire with our friends.
On Saturday morning I went hiking, picking up the Otter Creek trail at the campground and following it south about 2.5 miles to Otter lake, where I looped the small lake and then returned the way I came. The trail is right on the creek for much of the hike, with several stream crossings and 2 tunnels to pass under the BRP and some other road. It's a pleasant hike with minimal elevation gain.I got back to camp around noon and then that afternoon we took a scenic mountain pass drive to Lexington, VA, where we settled in at an outdoor table on a beautiful 70 degree day at the Devil's Backbone Lexington brewery. It was Teddy's first trip to a brewery and he was a good boy. He snoozed under the table. Unfortunately the brewery was closing at 4 PM for a private event, so all us peasants got kicked out for whatever wealthy person or group could afford to monopolize sizable brewery with a full kitchen on their busiest day of the week. On the way back we stopped at an ice cream shack, where my small dish of ice cream turned out to be about the size of both my fists. It was a lot of ice cream. So my dinner on Saturday ended up being tots, beer, and ice cream. I regret nothing.
Once we got back to the campground my friend, who is an electrical engineer, helped me with some wiring issues in the camper. The guy that installed my upgraded solar controller routed it oddly, and probably was costing me a bit of power in voltage drop by not connecting the controller directly to the battery on the shortest route. That is fixed now. Saturday night was a repeat of Saturday, beer and fire.
Sunday was go home day. The campground is 2.5 hours from home, so not a bad trip for a weekend.
2025-10-04 12:00:00
I headed out to my bookclub meeting earlier today. As I merged onto I-295 North I was in the 2nd lane from the right. There was a black Nissan Altima to my right that had just merged onto 295 from I-64W. He was not in a merge lane and did not have to change lanes. His right turn signal was still on. For reasons I cannot explain, I suddenly thought to myself, "that asshole is going merge left and hit me." So I tapped my brakes to slow down and as I did it, that asshole merged to the left quite rapidly with no turn signal. In fact, his right turn signal was still on after the sharp turn left. I laid into my horn and cursed him loudly from within the confines of my car. About 15 seconds later, he merged right again and exited back onto I-64W.
If he intended to stay on I-64W he had no reason to ever be on I-295N there. It's almost like some part of the universe was trying to ruin my day by placing that car there and and some other part of the universe decide, nope, not today.
Anyway, I had a really great weekend camping and it wasn't ruined by an asshole driver 1 mile from home.
I don't believe in the supernatural, ESP, seeing the future, etc. So I don't think I really had a premonition. My best guess is my subconscious registered the Altima coming left before my conscious brain did, and it got me to act quicker than I otherwise could of.
Also, the windows were darkly tinted, so I don't know the gender of the driver. But we all know it was dude.
I am interested in your thoughts on what really happened here. Feel free to pontificate on Mastodon or via email.
2025-09-28 12:00:00
Trip: 54
Nights: 183-184
It's a solid 4 hour drive from RVA to Floyd VA. The forecast was for a complete rain out on Saturday. We came anyway as this was a visit the town camping trip, not a hiking and exploring trip. As I start this on my phone at 3:30PM I'm sitting outside at Buffalo Mountain Brewing enjoy an Irish Red Ale. It hasn't rained all day, although I do think the weather will keep us in the camper tonight. There is a guy doing acoustic rock standards on mandolin at the brewery.
We are camping at Hippie Hollow, which is a Hipcamp. It lives up to its name. The campground is a couple of acres right on the creek. The owner lives on site in an RV and he has 4 or 5 sites for rent. He does have a nice bathroom with a shower in a portable trailer, with a permanent bath house under construction. He mentioned that he was in RVA a couple of weeks ago for the Widespread Panic concert. I've got 50A service and water, camping about 2 miles from town. And about 1 mile from this brewery.
Live music is the reason to visit Floyd. It's a literal 1 stoplight town, but within 1 block of that stoplight last night there were at least 6 live music opportunities. Americana jam sessions on the street are a thing here. There were 3 last night all within 50 yards of each other, guitar, stand up bass, mandolin, fiddle, and washboard players coming in and out of the groups as they played. The artists market had live music too. 2 small "clubs" had touring bands and a cover charge. The population of Floyd at the 2020 census was 440 people. That is one live music act for every 80 people. And I'm told last night was a little slow. Can any place in the world match that live music per capital ratio?
We got in around 3:30 PM on Friday and after setting up camp headed "downtown." We wandering the 1 block each direction from the stoplight checking out some stores and galleries and stopping to enjoy the jam sessions. After dinner at the local Mexican place we enjoyed some more street music before heading back to camp before it got dark. It was raining by 8 PM so Friday night was a play cards and drink beer in the camper while streaming the Red Sox radio feed kind of night. The good guys locked up a playoff spot on a walk off hit and I stifled my desire to celebrate loudly as there was a tent in the neighboring campsite. But I did celebrate, silently.
Saturday morning we slept in until 8, expecting it to be raining. It wasn't raining, and as I looked at the radar I realized the forecast was off and it would not be a rain out today. It was about 2 hours later when the forecast updated. Score one for the humans over AI.
So we spent the late morning and early afternoon on Saturday continuing to explore Floyd. We walked into just about every shop and gallery and had pleasant conversations with every shop owner we encountered. You don't get to browse quietly in Floyd. You at least have to chat with somebody as the price of entering the store. After a late lunch at the local diner we visited the local historical society museum and then went over to the brewery. Rain chased us inside from our front porch spot at the brewery around 4 PM. Once the storm passed we went to Food Lion as neither of us wanted to eat out again, and we had planned on dinner out Saturday night, so we had nothing to prepare for dinner. The rain started again just as we got back to the camper, and it was still raining when I went to sleep shortly after midnight.
On Sunday we went to the local park about a mile from the campground and spent a little over an hour with the local bird population. We identified 26 species, nobody was a rarity or particularly special. But that is fine with me. I'm perfectly happy walking around the woods for an hour with the Robins and Cardinals. #AllBirdsAreSpecial After that we packed up the camper and had an uneventful drive home.
I can't believe I've been in VA since 1998 and that was my first extended visit to Floyd. I did stop in to meet a friend for about an hour a few years back. Floyd is my kind of people. It reminds me of Davis, WV in that it's an enclave of sanity in an area that is mostly in favor of the shit happening in the country right now. I suspect there are more of these oasis' in VA and WV, and now I want to find them.
2025-09-24 12:00:00
My very first forays onto the Internet were clicking around Gopher Space via a gateway in a dial-up BBS that I frequented. THis would have been 1991 or 92, I think. So last wek, when I ran into this article about the simple joys of browsing Gopher sites I knew what I needed to do.
You'll need Lynx or some sort of browser plug-in to surf around Gopher space, and you should absolutely do it. There is a surprisingly active community of people maintaining Gopher blogs, or phlogs. You can go here as a starting point.
Have fun.
2025-09-20 12:00:00
I'm proudly Antifa. As was my grandfather who was injured in a Kamikaze attack on the USS Santee on October 25, 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
If you aren't anti-fascist you are pro-fascist. That is not an opinion, that is literally how the concepts of pro and anti work.
2025-09-14 12:00:00
It's fall migration season! We went birding both mornings this weekend. We got 46 species this morning, including some really nice warblers such as Wilson's, Prothonotary, Hooded, and a bunch more. The eBird list is at https://ebird.org/checklist/S273359482.. The trees are still full of leaves and warblers never sit still, making them very hard to photograph, so no photos. My camera does not do well auto-focusing a bird in the leaves. I did get some nice butterfly shots this morning though.
I also did my fall yard maintenance this week, pulling a big pile of weeds by hand and mowing, raking, over seeding and fertilizing. I mixed in some clover seed in the backyard. I also built a pine bark island under the bird feeders, since nothing desirable grows under them anyway.
If you are looking to get away from big tech the Rebel Tech Alliance has lists of alternatives to the usual suspects.
Someone in Tasmania has been traveling the country making 360 degree photos of the amazing scenery, and they've shared it all online.
I Tried Every To Do app and Ended Up with a.txt file is a blog post that delivers exactly what you would expect based on the title.
This guide to replacing the stock apps on an Android phone with FOSS options is great place to start if that sort of thing appeals to you. I've already done the biggies, mail and calendar, by using K9 and Etar respectively. But there is more I can do, and I plan to do it.
This blog post argues that if we want to see forums and communities on the open web that rival Facebook, etc. then we need to do the hard work of building those communities ourselves.
The Death of the Corporate Job makes a compelling argument that many corporate jobs are mostly performance art. A lot of people learned during COVID working from home that they could do their job in 3 hours a day. But now that are back in the office trying to look busy 10 hours a day. So they attend meetings where no decisions are made and create PowerPoint decks about the meeting that nobody will read. The more industrious are working on their side project between BS corporate meetings.
And finally, via my buddy Ryan, a list of notable rocks from Wikipedia.
And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.
