The daily reader......

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8:58 am - Tuesday - October 31st - Lone Rock - 59º F, humidity 33%, wind 3 mph out of the west by northwest.....partly cloudy with a forecast high of 75º F.  State of battery charge was 87% at 8:40 am this morning.

After the marathon game 5 of the World Series which had our TV on until almost midnight our batteries were at 88% to begin Monday.....the lowest they've been since we arrived at Lone Rock.  On top of that the forecast, for the first time, was for partly cloudy skies meaning that getting back to 100% on our house batteries would be iffy.  Now, even when there is total overcast our solar panels will still put some charge into our batteries, but getting back to 100% is not going to happen under those circumstances.  Nonetheless, we did get back to 97% by 3:30 pm, and that is as far as they got.

For a change we did not take a walk, and we did not go into town......we just sat home reading all day long.....well, let me revise that a little.....TLE read all day long.....I spent the morning cleaning our bug spattered windshield, cleaning bugs off our air horn 'trumpets' and our front cap, greasing the wheel bearings on our 26' enclosed car hauler trailer, vacuuming out the back seat of the VW (we hauled 4 bundles of firewood from the local gas station the other day), checking the oil and coolant levels in the VW for our upcoming trip back to SoCal for the wedding of our dear friend Amanda, and finished by sweeping out the trailer.  By that time it was around 1:30 and then I spent the rest of the day reading. 

It's the end of October and the National Park Service folk are beginning to winterize the facilities here at Lone Rock, which means turning off the water very soon.....we are hoping the water stays on at the dump station until after we depart on Wednesday, November 1st.  If it is turned off before we leave then there is a place in Page we can dump, but it's not nearly as convenient, obviously.

We were outside enjoying happy hour by the fire by 5:15 pm.......with the cloudiness there was not the usual light show, but we thoroughly enjoyed the view, nevertheless........

.....we got a little bit of color just after 7 pm, but that was the extent of the light show for the evening......

......since I no longer watch the NFL, and the only thing on Monday nights that we would, in the past, have watched was Monday Night Football, so we decided to spend the evening watching a few more episodes of 'Mad Men' Season 3......I love 'Unlimited Data'!

We were in bed before 11 pm.....thanks for stopping by!

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"The world has moved on......"

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8:29 am - Monday - October 30th, Lone Rock - 54º F, humidity 29%, wind 3 mph out of the west by northwest.......partly cloudy at sunrise.  Forecast high for today is 74º F, with partly cloudy skies.....charging the batteries via sun power will be interesting today.

Once again, upon awaking, I checked the state of charge for our house batteries on our Blue Sky monitoring system to find them at 89%......by 1 pm they were at 100%.  The combination of having the four solar panels now, and the ideal weather conditions (not too cold at night, and not too hot during the day) make for a perfect solar charging scenario.  Low temps in the 40's at night means the battery discharge will not be great (cold temps cause any batteries to discharge more quickly), and moderate daily temps in the 70's means there will not be too much heat which tends to inhibit the charging efficiency of solar panels.  Of course, what we are always chasing in this life style is the perfect weather......t-shirt, shorts and flip flop weather.......how nice that it is also the perfect weather for solar panels and boondocking!

We had no big aspirations for Sunday.....there is no NFL football being watched, so once again I had Sunday free.  I chose to finish Book 5 of Steven King's 'The Dark Tower' 7 book series.  I first discovered this series back in 2004, or 5.....I was sitting in an airport waiting for a flight.  Back then I always made sure I had a book to read on the plane as I really hate flying.....it's not that I'm afraid of flying, but I get bored, and reading helps pass the time more quickly.  Anyway, there I am needing a book before it's time to board our flight to Wisconsin and I spy a small store across the concourse which has newspapers and books, so I walk over to see what they have that might interest me.  I like reading westerns, and I immediately saw a book entitled 'The Gunslinger' with a cover picture of a cowboy with a gun in his hand.....okay, who it the author?  I turn the book over and it says Stephen King and there is a picture of Stephen King.  I am not a fan of Stephen King, but I was intrigued.....he wrote a western?  Well, I bought book and began to read it on the flight to Wisconsin......as one might expect with Stephen King involved, this is not really a 'Western' in the 'Western Genre' sense.    I also quickly discovered that it was not just an isolated book, but the first book in a seven book series called 'The Dark Tower'.  As the flight progressed I became captivated by the premise of the book, and series.  I finished the book within a day of landing in Wisconsin......I had to find the next two, or three books to keep reading so I drove over to the local Barnes and Noble and found they had books 2, 3 and 4 in paperback so I bought them on the spot.  To make long story a little shorter I finished reading book 6 just after we returned home from our Wisconsin visit, and found out that Book 7 had just been released in hardback (how timely for me, no?)......I found a copy at a local SoCal Barnes and Noble and purchased it for $60.....I had to see how it ended, right?  Well, that is the tale of my 3 week obsession with the 'Dark Tower' series back in 2004.  

So, fast forward to late last year when I heard the Dark Tower series was being made into a movie/TV series, and then I found out my grandson, Elijah (Kate's son), was reading the series, so I decided to read them again so he and I could talk about them when we were in town periodically.  I've been re-reading them quite slowly, and feel like I am getting more out of them this time around.....Kate says he is in the middle of Book 5 - 'Wolves of the Calla', which is the book I just finished.  I started to ready Book 6 - Song of Susannah around 2 pm when TLE said......"we need to take our walk"......uh, oh yeah!  So we changed our clothes and set out on a 4.2 mile walk at a fast pace....I think we averaged around 16 minutes, 23 seconds a mile for that distance, or about 3.7 mph.....WOW, no wonder I was a tad beat when we got back!

By the time we returned, and cooled down it was closing in on 3:30 pm......TLE had mentioned earlier that we should go out for dinner, which we have not done in quite a while, so around 4 pm we jumped in the VW and headed into Page to El Tapatio (4 stars on 483 reviews) Mexican Restaurant for an early dinner.....what a great decision that was.....

....we both ordered their Jumbo 'Original' House Margarita......and to accompany that wonderful Margarita I ordered a combo plate with two Chile Relleños.  TLE ordered their Pollo de Diablo.......

TLE's Pollo de Diablo and my dish in the background

......it's good to be back in Arizona where it is easy to find very good Mexican food!  We would wholeheartedly agree with the 4 star rating.  By the time we finished we were stuffed!  We were home by 5:45 pm putting on looser fitting clothing and, for me, taking a nice long nap!

We watched game 5 of the World Series in which the Dodgers blew a 4 run lead, a 3 run lead, and a 1 run lead.  They entered their last at bat (top of the 9th) trailing the Astros 12-9, but managed to score three to tie the game at 12-12.  The Astros ultimately won the game in the bottom of the 10th 13-12......the pitching for both teams was abysmal, as one might expect with 25 runs being scored, and 7 home runs.  Naturally I was an unhappy camper at just before midnight when the game finally ended.  But, as I have said before, it's only sports, not real life.

Going back to 'no NFL football being watched'.....it has been about a month since I stopped watching the NFL, and cancelled my 'NFL Sunday Ticket' (DirecTV) due to the disrespect being shown by NFL players for our flag, our country and military entirely based on a false premise.  I have not watched a game since September 25th, and I am gradually getting used to having my Sunday's back to do other things.  Life is good, and the 'world has moved on' as Roland Deschain (Dark Tower Series main character) would say.

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4th verse same as the first....

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8:19 am - Sunday - October 29th - Lone Rock - 49º F, humidity 41%, wind 2 mph out of the west by northwest......clear blue skies!  Forecast high for today is 76º F....yup, another day in paradise!  Charge state at 7:50 am on our fourth morning here at Lone Rock Beach.......89%!

Saturday, our fourth day at Lone Rock Beach, began like all the other days since we arrived......I get up each morning and see that the battery charge state is at 89%, just like very other day.  I know that before 2 pm we will be back at 100%.  The last time we were here (March of 2015) we only had two solar panes providing a total of 300 watts of charging power.  Since then we visited Am Solar in Springfield, OR in October of that same year to have two additional panels installed increasing our charging wattage to 620.  The last time we were here with similar weather conditions it would take almost until sundown to get back to 100%, and sometimes even then we did not make it.  In order to keep our batteries from discharging too far overnight we would employ our small Honda 100 watt generator while watching TV......now we are entering our fourth day of boondocking and have not once had to use a generator.  We just watch as much TV as we wish, and use whatever lighting we wish knowing that we will get back to 100% every single day regardless.

After writing my blog I went outside to sit in the sun and read my book and drink some more coffee for about an hour.....it is so nice to be able to do that again.  When we were here back in 2015 we made a habit of walking out Lone Rock Road to US-89 and back every single day for our exercise.  The out and back distance is just under 4 miles, so it's a good walk if you do it at a good clip.  We headed out to do this walk around 11 am covering 3.8 miles in just over one hour....we averaged about 17 minutes a mile which comes out to about 3.5 mph.....not too bad for the old folks, huh?

The Lone Rock Beach restrooms.....our turn around point

.....that was the most exciting thing we did all day......after a summer of nonstop excitement we're enjoying doing nothing for a change.....within 10 days we will be back working again for the winter, and back into a routine of going to work 5 days per week, but have we ever enjoyed our one month of being mostly by ourselves, waking up with the sun, and doing nothing until 11, or 12 everyday.

Of course, this was Saturday, right?  And on Saturday we have college football, right?  Around 1:30 pm I turned on our 2,000 watt inverter (again no generator), and then turned on the DirecTV DVR/receiver and the TV to watch the Penn State vs. Ohio State game, and what a barn burner it was......Ohio State trailed most the game, sometimes by as many as 18 points, but in the end they prevailed 39-38.  

By the time the game was finished it was after 5 pm and time for our evening happy hour/fire/cigar/music as we watched the sunset one more time.  On this evening I chose Handel's 'Water Music' which seemed so fitting, and TLE agreed........

......just as happens every single clear evening here the setting sun suddenly lights up the horizon in the most startling way, and once again we are treated to a light show for about 10 minutes......

.......by 7 pm the sun had slipped past the western escarpment, Lone Rock Beach was bathed in shadows, and we were beginning to feel the chill of the early evening air, so we headed inside to watch game four of the World Series.  On this night the game was tied 1-1 into the top of the 9th inning.  The Dodgers had been struggling offensively now for the better part of two games, but suddenly their bats came alive and they scored 5 runs to take a 6-1 lead into the bottom of the 9th....this time their ace, Kanley Jansen, pitched well, and the Dodgers won 6-2 evening up the series at two games a piece.  It was a nice way to end Saturday!

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"Love letters in the sand....."

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7:59 am - Saturday - October 28th - Lone Rock - 49º F, humidity 39%, wind 4 mph out of the west.......anecdotal observation.....NO wind at all.  The sun has just risen above the distant escarpment.......

Good morning!

I am really getting into waking up with the sun!  I am really getting into it not being 19º outside when I get up so I can go out and take a sunrise picture without freezing important appendages.  I am really getting into wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip flops every single day before noon!  I love sitting by the fire each evening looking east to see how the light from the setting sun (behind us) is hitting the sandstone in the distance........

There are 10's of thousands of seashells everywhere you walk

This is the typical size of these seashells

......and I love that while taking a hike along the beach Friday we came across a sign in the sand made of seashells saying "I love you"......I don't know how long ago that was made, but how cool to discover it on a day I'm just loving being  at Lone Rock with TLE!

 TLE!!

Around 12:30 pm when we were done lazing around we decided to take the aforementioned walk along the beach to the west to see how far we could walk.  It was an idyllic day with just enough breeze to take the edge off the sun's heat.  As far as walks go, this was not a long one for us......just 3.2 miles in length, and very, very flat, but it was perfect......

.....we were back 'home' by 2 pm and sitting outside reading for the rest of the afternoon.  At the time of our return I checked the battery monitor again and found we had reached 100% sometime while we were gone, and we still have not had to run either of our generators to put charge into our batteries.  Each morning when I get up I check the charge state and it is always exactly at 89%, even after several hours of TV watching the night before.   By 8:30 the batteries are being charged by the sun, and before 2 we are always back at 100%.

Around 5 pm I moved our chairs back over to the fireplace, lit the fire, lit a cigar, turned on some Vivaldi's 4 Seasons and we watched the light dancing on the distant escarpments once again.......

......around 6 pm I put a filet mignon on the Sea-B-Que and within 14 minutes that 2 inch thick filet was ready for human consumption.....we chased the steak with some Pinot Noir, and enjoyed sides courtesy of TLE consisting of a baked potato and some caramelized onions.  Unfortunately, my Dodgers took the edge of a great day by dropping game 3 of the World Series to the Astros 5-3.....ah well, it's only sports, not real life......life is good!

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Our little corner of paradise....

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8:03 am - Friday - October 27th - Lone Rock - 48º F, humidity 49%, wind 3 mph out of the west.....that is just about right.....clear blue skies from horizon to horizon with a forecast high today of 71º F......perfect!  Via our solar panels we reached 100% charge Thursday before 2 pm in spite of a few early morning clouds!

Looking west this morning....the sun is just hitting the sandstone escarpment

It is certainly interesting to wake up to temps that are not in the low 20's, and it is certainly interesting to wake up to sunlight forcing its way into our bedroom through the closed mini-blinds and curtains at 7:40 am.  It is certainly interesting to wake up in the middle of the night to complete silence, and an inky black darkness that seems impenetrable.  After traversing some 800+ miles ever southward we have finally found our sweet spot again.  I can't help but think of our friends back in Mammoth Hot Springs (Kristal, Dodge, Brian, Caitlin, and Mike) still working at the General Store and waking up to freezing temperatures each day.

The first thing we did Thursday morning was to drag our artificial turf 'awning mat' out of the trailer and the small mat for the entrance to the trailer, then a couple of chairs came out, and eventually our portable fireplace......it's beginning to feel like home for a week!

I think what enamors me about Lone Rock Beach are the larger than life views, the giant horizon, being able to see miles and miles down the Lake Powell shoreline, and the continuously changing colors on the sandstone escarpments which surround us as the sun crawls across the sky each day.  Time seems to stand still here for us, and it is a great place to recharge our internal batteries.  There is something about returning to this familiar place once and a while that touches my subconscious in such a profound way.  This is our third sojourn here, and I am sure it will not be our last.

 My feeble attempt to capture the beauty of Lone Rock Beach

  See what I mean about the changing colors?

Once we finished setting up our environment I got to work trying to troubleshoot the problem with my right turn signal, and brake light which I wrote about yesterday.  As is often the case, my mind was mulling the problem during the night.....I think I lay there in bed thinking about the problem for a good hour before falling back to sleep.  As is often the case when I do  that I was able to simplify the problem to either a bad relay, which could have been damaged by the excessive heat which stripped off all the insulation on about 3 feet of wiring.....

ALL the insulation is gone!  That was a really hot wire!

.....or there could be more damaged wiring which I had not yet identified.  Before we departed Bryce Canyon I had replaced two damaged wires, but still the blinker did not work.  Another thing that occurred to me was that when I replaced that right blinker relay 5 years ago I had not used the proper gauge wire.....I think what I used was 16, or 18 gauge, when I should have been using 12 gauge to match the other wiring......doh!  Anyway, over the course of that time the inadequate wiring caused too much resistance causing the wire to overheat time and again, and then finally failing dramatically as you can see from the picture above......ALL the insulation is gone.....I'm fortunate not to have had a fire.

So, the first thing I did was to test the relay to see if I was going to need a new one.....it passed all the tests, so then I focused on finding anymore damaged wiring relating to that relay.  It took me about 30 minutes to go over each wire and I finally found what I thought was another damaged wire, so I replaced that and then had TLE turn on the ignition and then the right blinker......it worked!  I cannot tell you how happy I was/am that it was as simple as finding one more bad wire to get the right blinker/brake light to work again!

So, now that I had identified all the bad wires I went about finding some 12 gauge wire in my wire stockpile to replace the 16-18 gauge wire I was using.  I found a piece just long enough to replace two of the three wires, but needed about 6" more to replace the third bad wire, so TLE and I drove into Page, AZ around 2 pm to visit the local O'Reilly Auto Parts store and buy some more 12 gauge wire, as well as a few more connectors.

After getting what I needed at O'Reilly's we headed over to visit the local Safeway grocery store to pick up a few items, and then we were on our way back to Utah.  It took me about another 90 minutes to finish rewiring the relay with the proper gauge wire.....I think it turned out pretty good......

 The long 23" wire in the engine bay replaced with 12 gauge wire (the red wire)

......then I got to work on the other two wires......one was the 'pigtail' (two into one) in the middle of the 'R. Turn' relay, and the other is the single red wire on the left side of the 'R. Turn' relay.........

......I spent another 30 minutes making sure all the other wiring was the proper gauge, and found nothing more to replace, so I buttoned up my electrical project with a very big smile on my face.....it's rarely ever as bad as I think it is going to be.....nothing like a little nocturnal problem solving!

By the time I was done putting my tools away I saw that it was after 5 pm, and suggested to TLE that it was time for cocktail hour and our first fire in months......she happily agreed!  

 First fire since we left South Lake Tahoe in June.....it's been too long

 The sun is almost gone.....just beautiful!

7 pm and time to head inside for the night

......as we sat facing east to watch the colors change on the sandstone escarpments miles away we listened to some Frank Sinatra, and then John Lee Hooker....what a way to end a perfect day......another day well lived!

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Lone Rocking.......

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8:17 am - Thursday - Lone Rock Beach - 51º F, humidity 27%, wind 5 mph out of the west by northwest......not a breeze here at Lone Rock.  Our temperature at 8:17 am is higher than some of our 'high' temps the past week.....forecast high for today is 80º F with clear blue skies from horizon to horizon, and is it ever a big horizon!  When we went to bed our house batteries were at 93% of a full charge after 5 hours of TV, and no generator.  This morning they had only dropped to 89%.....one of the benefits of over night temps in the mid 40's.  We'll be back at 100% early afternoon!

8:17 am at Lone Rock Beach....the sun is just behind the rear of the trailer right now

Our Jello plan was to be on the road between 10 and 11 am Wednesday, and we were right on schedule to leave a little after 10 am....not bad.  It was still under 40º F at 10 am......BRRRR!!! Well, Mr. Jello reared his head and said..."Not so fast!".....as we always do, TLE was standing behind the trailer to check to be sure the turn signals, and brake lights were working......I turned on the left turn signal and got the 'thumbs up' from her, but when I turned on the right turn signal I got the 'thumbs down'.....rats!  We've had this happen before, but it has been a year, or more.  In the past it was just a matter of checking the connections of the right turn signal relay, and then they would start working.  So, I walked to the back of the Newell and opened up the door for the rear electrical panel and saw there was a much bigger problem......on of the wires coming out of the relay was FRIED.....all the insulation had melted off of it, and then I opened the right rear engine bay door and found another long wire (about 24") that was toast also.  "Okay" I'm thinking.....I have extra wire and connectors and can fix this.  Well, after replacing both wires and all the connectors I still could not get the turn signal to work.  After about an hour I decided we would just head down to Lone Rock Beach where we would be near an automotive supply store and continue my troubleshooting there.  I figured all we had were left turns all the way to Lone Rock, and the left turn signal was working.

We finally departed Ruby's Inn/RV Park a little after 11 am and began our 140+ mile drive southward on US-89.  We began our day at 7,664' above sea level, and by the time we arrived at Lone Rock Beach some three hours later we were at 4,000' above sea level......the outside air was a balmy 75º F.......what a change from three hours earlier!

While I was tilting our solar panels, and dialing in our DirecTV signal I looked up to see a 2002 Newell (2 slides) just parking......it is so rare to see another Newell, let alone to find ones self parked just 100 feet away from one in such a remote place......

2002 Newell 2 slide 

.....we both noticed the other's rig almost immediately, and began walking towards each other......the owner's name is Mussy (sp?), and he is a member of our Newell Gurus forum.....and the world gets smaller!  TLE and I chatted with him for about 10 minutes before we bid each other adieu and returned to our set up routines......very, very cool!

We were last at Lone Rock Beach in March of 2015.  Back then Lake Powell, on which shores we sit, was at it's lowest point since the Glen Canyon Dam was built.  I have retrieved a picture from that time period and put a red arrow which points to a dark line on Lone Rock.....in the picture I took this morning you can see that the water level is almost to that dark line on the rock now.......

 March, 2015

October, 2017

......it appears that the lake level has risen by close to 10 feet in the last 31 months.....has it really been two and a half years since we last here?  

The terraced pad where we usually park when we are here at Lone Rock was a little crowded this time around , but we were able to 'shoe horn' ourselves into a nice spot which will afford us some privacy......

......by 5 pm we were sitting outside with cocktails enjoying the early evening view of Lone Rock and Lake Powell.....it's as if we were just here yesterday........

.....a little after 6 pm we went inside to watch game two of the World Series.....it was a great game that the Dodgers should have won, but their bullpen failed big time....the game was tied 3-3 going into the 10th when the Astros hitters hit back to back homeruns to take a 5-3 lead.....the Dodgers responded in the bottom of the 10th with a solo homerun, and then a 2 out single to score a man from second to once again tie the game.  In the top of the 11th the Astros added two more runs with a two run homerun to go up 7-5.  In the bottom of the 11th the Dodgers got another solo homerun to pull with in one run, but is how it ended......it's going to be an interesting series!

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"Wind it down!"

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7:11 am - Wednesday - October 25th - Bryce Canyon - 25º F, humidity 65%, wind 7 mph out of the west......forecast is for sunny skies and a high of 65º F on this getaway day....yup, time to move further south!

After three days of hiking in and out of the amazing Bryce Canyon our legs were telling us it was time for an off day, and time to "wind it down" as my friend Roscoe would often say this summer.  There was a part of me that wanted to hike one more day, but that part did not include my tired legs.  Instead I spent time cleaning the trailer....I hadn't vacuumed it for about a month, and the folded up artificial turf needed to be turned around to make it easier to insert the VW.  On top of that I discovered my Cannondale Bad Boy had another rear flat tire.....why, why, why is it always the rear tire?  So, after TLE and I pulled the turf out of the trailer I set up the bike stand to fix the flat.  Fortunately I had bought a few new tubes while we were still in South Lake Tahoe.  At any rate, I fixed the flat, put away the bike stand once again, and then TLE and I turned the turf around, and pulled it back into the now clean trailer.

Once that was done we decided to make a quick run over to see Mossy Cave.  It was only about 5 miles away, and we were in the parking 10 minutes later.  According to the sign at the beginning of the trail it is .4 miles to Mossy Cave, and it was pretty close.....our round trip total distance was .9 miles according to my Strava program........just enough to loosen up our legs a tad.......

The sedimentary layer next to the water is sooo pink I had to take a picture

.......it took us about 12 minutes to reach the cave.....I've no doubt this cave is more fascinating in the spring time, but on this day in late October it was a little disappointing.....not much moss, and very little water dripping from the ceiling....

......we took our obligatory pictures and then walked back to see the the waterfall that was mentioned on the sign at the fork in the trail.....

.....the main waterfall was almost dry, which, again is not surprising as it is so late in the year.....I'm sure it is more impressive during the spring and early summer months......

You can just barely see the trickle of water going over the waterfall

.......Mossy Cave is considered to be part of Bryce Canyon National Park, and so it is also not surprising that more 'hoodoos' can be found at this location........

....we were back home by 1 pm, at which time I decided to wash the VW.....it has been at least 6 weeks since I have done that, and she was looking pretty sad.  I filled one of our Rubbermaid wash tubs with water and with the help of a large sponge and a couple of micro fiber towels got her looking her best again.....I finished the job by vacuuming out the interior, then it was time to put away our Sea-B-Que, and top off the fresh water supply in preparation for 8 days of living off the grid!  Time to light the fires and move south!

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