2020 is gone!! Let the new year and the fun begin! One year is over, and we’re one year older. We are also one year closer to freedom from employment. I think I’m going to make this a quick post, because I really rather be out camping. The holiday season always seems to require travel and visitations with family, friends, special shopping deals. So despite having 10 days free from work, I still got very little done that I wanted to do. I did go down to Florida and visit with my brother and his wife and my mommy for 4 days. She has been locked away in the confines of her senior center condominium. Oh, she has been free to come and go as she pleases but they spend too much time stressing that people should be hiding in their rooms and not mixing with other people who might be infected. Of course if they isolated the whole complex and turned it into an island of good health they would be fine. But of course the workers, administrators, and vendors need to come and go at will and don’t follow the proper protocols. So the residents are the ones that have to suffer. I’m glad that the protocol for the vaccine is to cover the aged first along with the medical workers. But it was a good visit, and we had a good time with great food. We essentially had a full Thanksgiving dinner (Prepared by my Sister-In-Law) because my mother wouldn’t leave her room for Thanksgiving. But when I make the trip all the way down to Florida from North Carolina, she’s obliged to come out and see me since they won’t let me in the facility. So we had a great time. And although it was not very Florida weather like, with temperatures in the 30s and 40s, it’s really what I like. It’s amazing how on a 40° day, standing in the sun still seems  very hot and Floridian like.

I don’t want to talk much about COVID-19. There’s enough of that in the news. But I would like to say I wish they would give us some real data on the illnesses and deaths. I have read some information in a few fairly respectable places on the Internet  about effects of  vitamin D, diabetes, blood type, and other factors that affect the seriousness of the disease. I’ve also heard that it’s not any longer considered a “respiratory disease”. But now they believe it’s a virus that attacks your circulatory system and particularly does damage in your capillaries. And that’s why it causes lung failure without the normal pneumonia type reactions in the lungs. None of this seems to be in the CDC or prominent governmental scientific areas of the Internet or news releases. It would be nice to know of the 200,000 people that have died, what percentage of them had diabetes, what percent of them were high cardiac risk, what percentage had low vitamin D and what was their blood types. And even the same for people who end up in the ICU and recover versus the millions of people who hardly have any presentation of the disease. What’s the difference, and why don’t they tell us. It’s a simple statistical analysis that could easily be done by the health department or the CDC. It really makes you wan to start conspiracy theories. So that’s all I’ll say about COVID.

Well we are going to start out the new year, January 1, 2020, packing the trailer and heading to Uwharrie National Forest. We are hoping the electric sites are open for camping, and it’s not all crowded with amateur alcoholics. The National Weather Service has released a weather warning for heavy rain for the area, but I believe it’s only for a short time and we can live through it. January 15-16 we are going to be camping at Panther Creek campground in Tennessee. Again it’s a electrified site with hot showers in the bath facility so we’re hoping we can survive any weather that comes. I think Akela is really yearning to get out and get some hiking and exercise in because we haven’t done much in the last month. I’ve done about 3 videos on the Uwharrie National Forest, video one, video 2, video 3. This particular national Forest, while it’s about 2 hours from everywhere, has a lot of nice stuff you can do there. Hunting, hiking, biking, 4 wheeling, fishing, boating, swimming, camping, or just relaxing in front of a fire. So we will do a little camping video while we are there, but I don’t think we do anything about the area itself. But you never know..

We are going to end this here, and I hope everybody has a great 2021. We will do our annual anniversary Video in March with all my Channel Stats and progress over the years.. I hope you liked our January 1st annual summary. Leave me a comment and a thumbs up if you did or didn’t.  And stay safe.

Thanks folks hope to see on the trail.
Rick and Akela