107 degrees

You'd think the sun would be at its hottest around noon, and you'd be wrong. Things really start to cook from early to mid-afternoon, especially in these parts. In the summertime, in the higher latitudes, the sun doesn't peak until well after noon. By 5PM, the ground has been thoroughly roasted, so a person lying on the ground inside a tent is catching heat quite literally from all sides, despite the refreshing river breeze and the ThermaRest foam pad beneath him.

Afternoon temps shot up ten degrees from my previous report, from 97 to 107. Re-setting my tent was a chore; I should have taken commenter Richardson's advice and covered those sprinklers with rocks. The soil at the new site is very sandy; tent stakes wouldn't stay in the ground, so I had to weigh the lines down with large stones, of which there was, luckily, no shortage. The poncho took a while to figure out; I tried several clever arrangements only to discover that they weren't so clever. What you see in the previous photo is brought to you courtesy of my bungee cords.

It's definitely cooler inside the tent than outside it, especially when a decent breeze manages to slip an air-tendril under the tent fly, but the tent is designed to withstand thunderstorms and harsh gusts, so whatever comes into the tent has already been drained of most of its kinetic energy (recall my experience at the Celilo campground).

The end result is that the tent is a 90-something-degree sweatbox, and my head (not to mention the rest of my body) is releasing perspiration faster than I can drink it in from the Camelbak.

Tomorrow, I'll be leaving a bit late, as I'll be sending more unnecessaries home via the Arlington post office, which opens at 9AM. Tonight, I'll hit one of the gas. stations for water, ice cubes (they'll be mostly melted by morning, but still quite cold), drinks, and PowerAde, which I like better than Gatorade.

My solar charger is sitting on a nearby rock, charging for its third day. I've decided to try to charge it for as long as possible before using it with the BlackBerry; if an entire day's charging produces only a few minutes' battery life, then I probably need to charge for at least a week, don't I?

All of this is enough to convince me I could never pull a Thoreau and lead a near-primitive existence for two years. I like modernity too much and see little reason for humanity to regress, even when on vacation. Want to clear your head of modern noise? Go meditate! You can do it anywhere! This isn't to say that I can't live in isolation; I can do that just fine. If you put me in a cave that had the plush amenities of a high-end apartment (library, fast computer with blazing Internet connection, a well-equipped kitchen, an adequate bedroom, and a well-designed bathroom), I'd do just fine for two years. Just don't expect me to feel the same bliss inside a drafty cabin with only my latrine bacteria for company.

Damn, it's hot.


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