The Great Outdoors

How are your hands? I worked with a guy back in the 1980s that rock climbed. His hands were often scratched and battered. He explained that rock climbers learn how to position their hands in cracks and crevices so they can be used as pitons. Ouch!

I have wondered where in this country I could live if not in this area. The Ozarks of Missouri is one of the places. Farther south may be just as nice but would get too warm for me.

I have a new hobby. Like I really needed another. I'm banging rocks with a hammer for fun and relaxation. I have started a quest. I'm going to find a trilobite. The trouble with trilobites (yeah, I know, I went there) is they started hiding about 300 million years ago. They've gotten good at it. But I'm going to find one.

Anyway, this post isn't about trilobites, it's about how I got on this kick. This rock did it. The more I looked at it the more fascinated I became. Something was obviously in there but I had no idea what it was. I still have very little idea, I switched to trilobites before I investigated much. I'm going to post pictures at a fossil site to see what they say. I believe it's some type of underwater plant or possibly a crinoid. That's as much as I'm willing to guess until I learn more. I'll also go as far as to say it's about 400 million years old, give or take a hundred million or so. I'm not very good at this yet. So without further ado, let me introduce the rock that started a quest. (cue blaring fanfare)

Another angle. The round, brown stain on the edge could have been the stalk of the whatever it is.

😂

I'd have felt inadequate swinging my little hammer next to their sledges. Everybody pointing and laughing about my little tool.

I recently read about biker's becoming dissatisfied with Harley's woke direction. Apparently some are even trading in their Hogs for Indians. (I'm claiming this is not a political post to avoid breaking my own rule. It's a socio-economic comment about outdoor entertainment equipment. Yeah, that's what it is.)
Man. I'd better go get some coffee, it sounds done.

this rock caught my eye a few years ago so i picked it up, but its still on my bucket list to find out what it is..

guess i can scratch this one off my bucket list, it’s a crystal..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrite_(crystal)

P.S. hey fester.. thx gd you weren’t nekked in this particular pose.. Lol

Huh, I was guessing a fern and even tried looking it up. When you said "dendrite" I remembered seeing patterns like this at gem and mineral shows. Pretty cool stuff.

yea, i always thought it’s some sort of a plant, so it was surprising to find out its a crystal.

here’s another one i picked up very recently, my guess is a bone or petrified wood.

It looks more like bone than petrified wood to me but I'm no expert.

to me too, but something about the flat part of it reminds me of some stuff i’ve seen in the arizona petrified forest. i’ll take it to the natural history center and ask.

It's a shame the tooth broke but cool that you have one. I'm not too familiar with ancient life so I looked up mosasaur. An aquatic air-breathing reptile. Sheesh! They got big! Some were almost 18 meters long.

The fossils around here are from about 100 million years earlier. I'm just learning how to recognize different things like mollusks, plants, and molds in the rock. I have a long ways to go. I'm having trouble getting things out the rocks. Our sandstone seems to be either as hard as concrete or so soft things break apart before I can get them out. No matter. I have an endless supply.

I've been wanting to get back out on the backpacking trail but my legs have been complaining about the weight. I decided that I needed to shave some weight off my pack so I spent an entire day weighing all my gear to decide where I could save weight. The problem was that to get any lighter I'd have to invest in higher-end equipment. That stuff is expensive.

Then an unexpected series of fortunate events allowed me to upgrade much of my backpacking equipment. I decided a new backpack was in order and chose a newer, lightweight one. When I started to pay through Paypal I was told I had enough bonus points to pay for the pack outright. A free high-end backpack! I used that money on a new sleeping pad and cook pot. I had enough extra points to also buy a new light weight rain jacket as my old one leaks. Then the last of the windfall went into an ultralight tent. Now my entire kit, minus water and food, weighs 17 pounds (7.7kg) or less depending on what clothing is required for that outing. I'm pretty happy about that.

Watch this spot because I've decided to finally write up reviews of the equipment I've used over the years. I originally promised tent reviews but I'll start with backpacks because they're the first required item for backpacking.

Coming soon to this space.

I spent a couple hours today helping friends tap their trees and hang buckets for syrup making. I'm going to help empty the buckets daily (or thereabouts) and get paid in syrup at the end. Their syrup is some of the best I've ever tasted.

The best weather for collecting sap is when it gets below freezing at night and above 40F (4.4C) during the day. The sap rises when it's warm and flows back toward the roots at night. The sap changes composition the more it flows so if it flows continually it quickly gets to a point where the sap is no good for syrup anymore.

Sap comes in stages that they call "runs". The first run has a high sugar content to shock the buds awake and give them energy to start growing. It has little flavor and is often used to make maple sugar candy because it starts with so much sugar.

As the sap flows it starts carrying more and more nutrients to feed bud growth. There are sap hygrometers to measure the nutrient content but my friends just go by color and taste. At some point you just start calling it "second run" sap. The added nutrients give it more maple flavor and makes some of the best syrup, in my opinion.

At another point it becomes third run sap because it contains even more nutrients. This run can make syrup just as good as the second run, just with more maple flavor.

At some point the sap is carrying so many nutrients that it starts becoming bitter and sap season is done. Sometimes the third run ends quickly or is even passed by depending on the weather. The weather for the coming week is perfect for sap collecting.

The collected sap goes into barrels and when there is enough it gets pumped into the boiling pan over a wood stove. The sap gets boiled in the big pan, (stainless steel, rectangular, about 4 x 5 feet) until it gets boiled down enough. Then it's transferred a few gallons at a time to a smaller pan over an industrial sized propane burner. When it gets to the right consistency as measured by a syrup (not sap) hygrometer it is strained through filters and sealed in canning jars.

It takes a lot of sap to make one gallon of syrup. I think the average is around 45 to 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. It can go as high as sixty. My friends said they usually need only thirty to forty gallons of sap.

Oh, I hate to tell you this but none of the store syrup I've tasted in the last few years comes close to my friends' syrup. These days almost all sap is run through evaporators that quickly take the sap down to syrup. Sap boiled over a wood fire boils longer and even gets hot spots from uneven burning. This caramelizes more of the sugar than the evaporators do which makes it a little thicker and gives it a richer flavor.

That's a great sap story

That's because I'm a great sap. *bada bing*

First run is done. We collected roughly 70 gallons (265 liters) of sap before the weather turned colder and the sap stopped running. That's not a great deal for these trees but it's still early and the ground is still frozen. Second run should start later this week when some warmer weather returns.

Sap comes in stages that they call "runs".

is that the same as A or B grades? I’ve been told to always buy the B grade because it’s more nutritious and flavorful.

Sillver1 wrote: Sap comes in stages that they call "runs".

is that the same as A or B grades? I’ve been told to always buy the B grade because it’s more nutritious and flavorful.
Yes and No. Almost all syrup sold in the USA is Grade A syrup. The color of Grade A can vary from about the color of light tea to almost opaque. The main difference between Grade A and Grade B is how many minerals were in the sap that was boiled down. At some point there are enough minerals in it to give the syrup such a strong flavor that is usually used in recipes and not as a condiment. So Grade A can be light or fairly dark but will be sweeter than Grade B.

Grade B does have more flavor and might be more nutritious from the extra minerals but syrup is not health food, it's akin to candy, being high in sugar content. I usually prefer a fairly dark Grade A but some foods do better with a lighter flavor.

In a nutshell, most early runs produce Grade A syrup while later runs with the higher mineral content and stronger flavor produce Grade B syrups.

A few years ago I bought some 100% pure maple syrup labelled as Grade A but must have been Grade B in reality. I went out and bought the same brand of syrup in a glass bottle that was labelled identically and found that was good syrup. Moral: Only buy syrup in glass containers so you can see what you're getting.

Oh yeah, second run started a couple days ago. Yesterday I collected about thirty gallons of sap so the trees are waking up and starting to produce more. They got a gallon and a half of syrup from the roughly seventy gallons of first run sap. It took a week to collect that much. It might only take a couple days now.

I stumbled on this site which seems to explain sap and syrup fairly well. It mentioned something I didn't know. It differentiates between maple syrup and pancake syrup. They say pancake syrup has added corn syrup which makes it thicker. That makes it less likely to run off your pancakes, I guess, but keep it away from me. I'm an unashamed syrup snob.

https://www.foodandwine.com/maple-syrup-11871256

Man, I rambled. I blame a very late night, early morning and not enough coffee. Going to make more right now. Many people use syrup to sweeten coffee but nothing goes in mine.

edit: I just love this editor :rolleyes