What's the world coming to? Well, now, that's a question, now isn't it.
I can only speak for my own.
It's good. Stressed about the election on Tuesday of next week. But making the prediction that turnout will be high and remaining confident it will be so in favor of reason, kindness, and joy.
Indeed, part of today's motivation to post is that independent media may well be under attack after Tuesday, if things go particularly bad. We don't need a fascist narcissist at the head of the government. But if I believed in polls I would perhaps be packing right now. The scary part (in my essentially non-political mind) is that, due to the ancient and pointless Electoral College system Vice President Harris may win the popular vote by a landslide and lose the presidency according to that system. Sigh.
On more ground-level news, I spent a couple nights up at my favorite campsite at Lock A Campground last week. The reservation was for Monday and Tuesday nights, and I got up there around 2-pm Monday and took my time setting up my new tent at campsite #45, my little Holy Land. It was a breeze, and the Core 6 person Instant Setup. tent is sooooo happymaking. Here's a pic:
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| My home away from home at Cheatham Dam's Lock A Campground. |
The first thing I put inside the tent was my camping air mattress, seen above acting in its new role as doormat. I blew it up not with a pump, but with my breath, counting around 150 lungsful before its 5 air chambers were in bedtime shape. Checking on it at dusk, I found two chambers flat as a proverbial pancake. I zipped up tight, grabbed my keys, and drove the 10 or so miles into Ashland City and past to the Walmart store, picking up one more bundle of firewood and a home floor air mattress. This baby has a built in electric pump for inflation and deflation. OMG, this is a life-changer, or at least a camping life-changer. The thing, once inflated, is a smooth 6-8 inch layer of air between me and the earth and stays inflated. And it cost less than the frickin' camping mattress. Win win win.
I had a little ceramic heater in my tent and ran it all night, but at 42 degrees outside all it could do is heat a small area directly in font of it. It did not help that the tent was significantly larger than my 4 person one. I awoke at around 4 in the morning, 'way prior to sunrise, and spent a couple hours reading in my little 40 degree rated sleeping bag. Light awakened me and I arose, spending the morning simply cooking, boiling water for coffee, eating breakfast, and cleaning up. I fished some, but it's awkward fishing off that Army Core of Engineers large granite and sandstone cluttered shore.
Around 1 pm I grabbed my Montana lodgepole pine hiking staff and headed off to hike for 2 hours or so, taking the camp trail east from the campground and hooking into the gorgeous Cumberland River Bicentennial trail that follows the river bank all the way to Chapmansboro and Sycamore Creek. So beautiful. Here's a pano I took along the way:
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| Cumberland River Bicentennial Trail, east to the left and back to the campground west on the right. Doubleclick to scroll through the pano. This stump marks my turnaround point. I'll be back to do the whole thing one day. |
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