Traveling

[Vrede too]

Why should anyone else care when you always could have googled but were just predictably slow about figuring that out?

[GoCubsGo]

OK Google to the rescue:

Do you drink the lake water?

Lake Superior is the cleanest of the Great Lakes, and many people drink the water regularly (even in their homes). On trip, the decision is yours. For your safety we bring a high quality water filter or boil our water.

https://www.naturallysuperior.com/frequ ... questions/

Of course, the previous is from a recreational business, so perhaps a grain of salt is needed. Most cities and towns appear to treat their water in some fashion.

Can you please send some of that great water to the West Coast?

Boiling the crap out of it would work, but for backpackers and the like a filter works just fine.

[Vrede too]

Boiling the crap out of it would work, but for backpackers and the like a filter works just fine.

For infectious agents just bringing water to a boil is sufficient.
Many filters won't get viruses, but since viruses aren't very hardy outside of a host that is usually not a problem in the US and Canada. In Mexico and other warm climes it can be dicier. Fancy filters and or weak bleach/iodine solutions in conjunction with filters can be used in those places.
Boiling doesn't address toxins or heavy metals and filtering often doesn't, but the loading for a body of water as large as Superior would have to be massive.

[Ulysses]

OK Google to the rescue:

Do you drink the lake water?

Lake Superior is the cleanest of the Great Lakes, and many people drink the water regularly (even in their homes). On trip, the decision is yours. For your safety we bring a high quality water filter or boil our water.

https://www.naturallysuperior.com/frequ ... questions/

Of course, the previous is from a recreational business, so perhaps a grain of salt is needed. Most cities and towns appear to treat their water in some fashion.

Can you please send some of that great water to the West Coast?

Boiling the crap out of it would work, but for backpackers and the like a filter works just fine.

Of course there are many different types of filters. One with activated charcoal might reduce any heavy metals to an acceptable level. And if paired with a very fine filter, it might do the trick. Boiling might be easer and cheaper. During my backpacking days, although I knew better, I stopped once and filled my canteen from a babbling brook, without boiling or filtration. The next day I got kind of sick. But it "passed". Probably some animal crapped near the stream. Generally speaking though, the Tuolumne river water was safe to drink, as I recall. But again, you never know what happened upstream.

I wonder if Lake Superior water quality varies by its distance from the nearest discharge pipes, if any.

[Vrede too]

Airlines like United and American are dedicating billions of dollars to fly a new type of aircraft that won't require pilots

Pffft, it's old tech.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMhYl74vw2c

[Vrede too]

So we've departed Wyoming and arrived in Billings Montana. Not that impressed yet. We'll see.

You passed through this area:

Update: Lame Deer residents ordered to evacuate for Richard Spring fire

[O Really]

So we've departed Wyoming and arrived in Billings Montana. Not that impressed yet. We'll see.

You passed through this area:

Update: Lame Deer residents ordered to evacuate for Richard Spring fire

We did, but not this year. That was part of our somewhat ill-fated trip from Sturgis to Hardin. Lady O says, "let's not take the 90 - it looks like 212 would be a nice ride across the country." And it was - until somewhere I think close to Busby when they had about 5 miles of road taken up for repair. That's when we understood that Montana has two seasons: winter and construction. When I say "taken up" I don't mean scraped to the base; I don't mean down to the gravel. They had the road all the way down to the rock on both lanes. The roughest 5 miles ever in my life. So now whenever we think of 212, that part overshadows the really nice (otherwise) drive, particularly when combined with the old bag that ran the scurvy RV park in Hardin. But the visit to the Little Bighorn was great.

[Vrede too]

You passed through this area:

Update: Lame Deer residents ordered to evacuate for Richard Spring fire

We did, but not this year. That was part of our somewhat ill-fated trip from Sturgis to Hardin. Lady O says, "let's not take the 90 - it looks like 212 would be a nice ride across the country." And it was - until somewhere I think close to Busby when they had about 5 miles of road taken up for repair. That's when we understood that Montana has two seasons: winter and construction. When I say "taken up" I don't mean scraped to the base; I don't mean down to the gravel. They had the road all the way down to the rock on both lanes. The roughest 5 miles ever in my life. So now whenever we think of 212, that part overshadows the really nice (otherwise) drive, particularly when combined with the old bag that ran the scurvy RV park in Hardin. But the visit to the Little Bighorn was great.

It's a real Montana story . We used to joke that a 'Montana vacation' was when you drove somewhere and fixed the car.

I meant "area" broadly - that's how we roll in Montana. You would have passed not that far west of the huge Northern Cheyenne Res fires. Plus, there's a separate fire complex immediately NE of Hardin and I-90.
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/7143/

[Vrede too]

TMZ: So far this year the FAA has levied > $1M for bad behavior on airplanes, usually mask issues. One person was assessed $45K. On top of this would be any criminal penalties plus possible tort claims by the airlines, crew or other passengers.

[GoCubsGo]

We did, but not this year. That was part of our somewhat ill-fated trip from Sturgis to Hardin. Lady O says, "let's not take the 90 -

Someone's been spending too much time in California.

[O Really]

Someone's been spending too much time in California.

We've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing.

[Ulysses]

Someone's been spending too much time in California.

We've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing.

Hear, hear!

[O Really]

So SIL grew up in California, and moved to Seattle when he started with Boeing. I didn't know much about his extended family, but it turns out he's got several relatives in northern Idaho resulting from an interesting story. He had a couple of uncles, or great uncles maybe, who were in the navy during WWII, stationed at a navy base on Lake Pend Oreille (pronounced "ponderay") Idaho. Neoplacebo may have known it, but I had no idea there had ever been a navy base in Idaho. Turns out it wasn't just any ol' navy base. With a population making it the largest city in Idaho at the time, and being also the second largest training base in the country, it was a big deal. So the uncles got out of the navy at the end of the war, decided they liked northern Idaho, and thus SIL has some relatives there.

The former base in now a very nice state park, but has quite the history - training base, prisoner compound, and a continuing submarine operation in the very deep lake.

https://parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/pa ... t/history/

[Vrede too]

So SIL grew up in California, and moved to Seattle when he started with Boeing. I didn't know much about his extended family, but it turns out he's got several relatives in northern Idaho resulting from an interesting story. He had a couple of uncles, or great uncles maybe, who were in the navy during WWII, stationed at a navy base on Lake Pend Oreille (pronounced "ponderay") Idaho. Neoplacebo may have known it, but I had no idea there had ever been a navy base in Idaho. Turns out it wasn't just any ol' navy base. With a population making it the largest city in Idaho at the time, and being also the second largest training base in the country, it was a big deal. So the uncles got out of the navy at the end of the war, decided they liked northern Idaho, and thus SIL has some relatives there.

The former base in now a very nice state park, but has quite the history - training base, prisoner compound, and a continuing submarine operation in the very deep lake.

https://parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/pa ... t/history/

Also:

Naval Reactors Facility

Idaho has been very important to the Navy. Weird.

[O Really]

Ut Oh. Fall has fallen with foulness in the Northwest.
https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/Se ... baff15ed15

By end of weekend, Puget Sound area will have had as much rain as has fallen all summer.

[GoCubsGo]

Isn't this a good thing?

[O Really]

Isn't this a good thing?

Well yeah, if the rain fell where the fire or drought was.
And it might even snow in the higher mountains like Mt. Ranier, which is badly needed. There was bad snow pack and glacier melt this year. I'm not really complaining about our personal conditions, but it's tragically sad to get a front-row seat to the deterioration and destruction from unmitigated climate change. Rain and flood where you don't need it. Drought and uncontrollable fire. Melting glaciers, starving polar bears, dead salmon, polluted water, big lake reservoirs without enough water to run the power generators...yada. It's good to be old.

[Ulysses]

It's got so bad they've had to wrap a fire blanket around the biggest tree in the world, The General Sherman, in Sequoia National Park.

Sad.

[O Really]

Creative solution to housing shortage and homeless shelters.
Only in Seattle could you find a homeless RV with boats in the "yard."

https://komonews.com/news/project-seatt ... ighborhood

[Ulysses]

Wouldn't want to be in that thing in a major earthquake...