Friday, October 25th

Last night we had an absolute torrential downpour. Wind was blowing hard and rain was driving non-stop for hours. Impressively, our tent held up very well. I'm glad I took the time to stake down the extra guy lines and tie all the ties on the rainfly. I thought I had bought a 12-pack of hand warmers at Fleet Farm, though on closer inspection of the package, it was a single hand-warmer that said it lasted for 12 hours, which Leo had already used. It's gotten pretty cold the last couple nights, so we definitely needed something to warm us. I went out in the rainstorm to Wal-Mart and found us some battery-powered electrical ones, which will be a very nice long-term solution as long as we have electricity to charge them.

When I got back to the camp, I found that the power was out. We made do with flashlights and other battery-operated devices (glad I bought a Switch Lite for situations like this), but didn't have any power for our Starlink setup, so no wifi. It also meant we couldn't charge the hand warmers I'd gotten.

I was getting ready for bed, pulled out the DC adapter for my CPAP, and was getting ready to grab the big car battery I have for it out of the Jeep, when I looked at the electrical panel, and saw that actually the GFCI had tripped. This makes a bit of sense, since the end of the extension cord wasn't actually long enough to reach all the way into the tent, and instead part of the cord of our power strip plugs into it outside, so I'm sure that connection was getting very wet. I reset it and things have been good since then.

I was able to charge the warmer, and it was very nice to have in the cold tonight. Our forecast lows have been around 34 degrees, and the sleeping bags I got said they were comfort-rated for 20-30 degrees, but I think I and the sleeping bag manufacturer have different notions of comfort. Still, I got good sleep. Leo apparently did not get any sleep, as he said one or the other of the dogs had been running him ragged all night, so he's not up to doing much today.

Also today, I walked for 2 hours in order to poop. The only working toilet at the camp is a pit latrine by the boat launch, about 3 miles walk from the campsites, as why would you want to put an outhouse near to where people camp? It took me a little under an hour to walk there, and for the walk back I thought I'd be clever and take the more direct route, as the road curves around a fair bit, so I walked along the shore until near to our campsite, then went through the woods.

The shore includes a pretty deep inlet that I had to walk the long way around, and the woods here are super thick with underbrush that I definitely wouldn't have been able to navigate without the GPS on my phone, as there was maybe 20 feet of visibility. This is why I prefer coniferous forests.

A lot of people are moving into the nearby campsites here for the weekend, and Monkey has been freaking out at every new neighbor, as quite a few of them brought dogs.

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