As I sit here in my well insulated house, I can barely think because of the drone of cicadas, crickets, and frogs. This is a noisy place to live, next to this stream and swampy area. Also I’ve noticed that at exactly sundown the mosquitoes come out like snipers bullets. If I go out in the backyard to kick the ball around for Akela, I end up with at least 4 mosquito bites, And that in less than 3 minutes. Other than that, I do love this house. I finally have got almost full coverage of grass, so the boy brings in very little mud. The lowest part of the yard is mostly moss, but that takes care of the mud to. But this blog is about my life and where I live. It’s supposed to be about details on the YouTube channel. The problem is I have no clue where I left off describing the videos and so I will have to just start at the “Falls Lake Campground”.

I had decided I was slightly missing the companionship of my niece and her dog and that I had not seen her new apartment since I helped her move in. She had told me that she had got an all new kitchen, a new washer and dryer, and new flooring and paint. And of course she had set up all her furniture and decorated the place since I was last there watching boxes get piled up in the corners. So I decided I would plan a camping trip within easy driving of her place and we could go out to dinner one night. So we stayed at this large expansive lake just north of Raleigh, North Carolina which had several “State Recreation” areas for camping. The campground we stayed at was the “Falls Lake Holly Point Campground” and it was a nice campground with all the necessary electricity for the air conditioner.  The Raliegh area is considered “coastal plain” and is flat and hot like a griddle iron. And it is hot there in the summer. And I mean hot! And I think one of the reasons that Akela took to swimming so well, is that it was so hot and he wanted to get in the water. While we do blow the air-conditioning full blast in the car, I don’t think it really gets to the very back as well as it could. I know in the front I’m often freezing, and he is often hanging over the seat sniffing the rear air conditioning vents. But we had a good time camping, hiking, and going out to dinner with my niece. Even though she took us to a restaurant that cost $250 for just the 2 of us. Probably the $60 bottle of wine I picked out did not help.

I guess I should mention the sticker endeavor that I did to try to raise a little money for the channel. I had noticed in the last couple of videos that any time I was getting some from the sides or looking into the sun the video was peppered with dust spots. I had gone to great lengths to clean the lens and the filter on the lens and I could see that the despots were inside the lens where I could not get to. The camera is 4 years old and quite heavily abused since I keep it open and ready laying on the seat of my car and sometimes on the floor. It really is in an expensive camera. It cost around $500 brand-new 4 years ago when it was kind of revolutionary. I bought an exact copy of it for $200 that had hardly been used at all. So I’m retiring the original camera and now using the new one. I had seen a couple of videos about raising money on your channel. Of course I think the very popular thing for the big channels is to start up a Patreon membership. I looked at that but they take 5 to 7% of all your money, and then charge you to get the money in various ways. I also looked at getting a PayPal account that people could easily donate to, however PayPal charges 3 to 5% to receive money into an account. So I thought that I would like to be able to give out stickers to people I meet at campgrounds and events, and then I could also sell them on my channel for roughly twice their cost. Well, I bought 100 stickers at $1.85 a sticker. They were a special order because I wanted them to be bigger than the

normal size, and so that also required a larger envelope to mail them out in. And that required more postage to mail them out. The postage was roughly $1.10 depending on where it was going. It was more if going past Texas ($1.35). The saving grace on postage is that I have 4 books of 20 each stamps. And they are forever stamps I bought back when stamps were only $.32. Forever stamps are now worth $.55. So I can put 2 of these forever stamps on the envelopes and that takes care of the postage for most of them. And I’ve had the stamps forever, so no real loss there. But the oversized envelopes did cost $.25 each. So in the big picture the stickers are really costing me $3.20, and so I am making $1.80 on each sticker. So if I sell all hundred stickers I will just break even. And I’m of the belief that there is no chance I’ll ever sell all hundred stickers to my viewers when I have less than 5000 subscribers. Several of my sticker buyers though have given me some extra cash to put towards the channel, and I am greatly appreciative of that, though that wasn’t the idea. If people place the sticker anywhere that somebody might see it while they’re out and around it helps promote the channel. So they’re doing me multiple favors with the sticker. But I guess the moral of my story is the next time I do stickers, they will be the normal size and coloration, and cost around $.30 a sticker. So live and learn, and if you’d like to make a $5 donation to the channel (or more) I’ll send you a sticker. I don’t think there’s much risk that I’ll run out before Christmas. At the moment just my faithful commenters have been the ones that have ordered stickers. But I hope to maintain a supply to give out at campgrounds and events anyways.

SPOILER ALERT! I have had to cut back to one video a week because I just can’t get out and film and edit fast enough to get out the quality videos that I want to produce twice a week. However, I took a 5 day vacation to Western North Carolina/Tennessee and have some phenomenal video’s coming up. I unfortunately have done these videos through my eyes, which is the way I do videos, and after telling people about the videos I did, they explained to me the significance of the area I went to visit and the special attraction that I did point out but did not properly identify. So to give you a very small hint, we took a ride on “The Tail of the Dragon”! And I’m told if you’re a motorcyclist, you will know all about that. So I have 5 videos about this area in the Cherokee and Nantahala national forests. They will be coming up over the next 5 weeks and I hope you enjoy them. The other reason I have spread them out over the next 5 weeks is because I will be vacationing down in Florida visiting my mother and brother, and then traveling on through the keys. I hope to bring some decent videos back from that trip! Especially drone footage around the keys.  Hopefully I will also bring back the drone this time!

So stay tuned, and stay safe.

Rick, and Akela