Part 8, A Lazy Day
Happy Birthday to Phil!
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| He-Man Breakfast |
7:25am - I am last one out of bed, as usual. I slept well and stayed warm except for a few times when an exposed hand or arm got chilly enough to wake me and require burrowing it back into the sleeping bag. The overnight low was in the low 50's and I slept in long johns and a long sleeve t-shirt. It was nice sleeping.
Phil has two frying pans in the fire and is starting bacon when I get up. The only real planned thing for today was to eat a giant breakfast, and Phil doesn't disappoint. We have eggs, bacon, sausage, more onions and peppers, home fries and toast. It's an absolute feast, and quite a production in the making. Any pretenses we have had about keeping away the bears and other critters seem less relevant as we drip bacon grease all over the place. If this doesn't attract every critter within miles I don't know what will. But it is true what they say... bacon makes everything better.
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| Breakfast Production |
9:00am - Breakfast time. Conversation around the table centers around what to do today, with everyone being leg-weary and the forecast calling for a good chance of some rain. Never having been here before, I want to take the van into Lake Placid and look around some, even if nobody else wants to go. I would at least like to see whatever can be seen from a brief drive by, and find a geocache or two if possible. Phil likes the idea, and soon everybody has agreed that we will head into town after breakfast. Phil then declares a birthday lunch plan of wings and beer at a place in town, and nobody objects even a little.
10:00am - Breakfast is done and cleaned up. People spend the next hour and a half showering, and doing all sorts of miscellaneous tasks. I do one of the things I always seem to do when we are in camp and I have a few extra minutes - wander down to the lake and take more pictures. I am getting to the point where I have taken the same shots in all sorts of different light and different times of day, but I fell like shooting something, and don't have the time to wander too far off.
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| The Lake... again |
11:30am - Everybody is in the van and heading for Lake Placid. The sky to the south and west looks very dark and foreboding as we drive out the access road, and we can see a wall of rain off in the distance. As we approach town, a few scattered drops hit the windshield, and it is cool to see the ski jump towers as we drive by. In Park City, Utah, the ski jumps were carved right into the side of a ridge. Here, the landing areas are on slopes but the towers are free standing metal structures. It is hard to imagine that the 1980 Olympics here were already 32 years ago. It's also hard to imagine where all the people stayed and how anybody got anywhere, as this is a little resort town, and the road network is tiny. It is beautiful out here, but there are very limited roads in, and the nearest cities (and airports) of any size are Albany and Montreal, both a couple hours away. Traffic must have been a nightmare.
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| Lake Placid ski jump towers |
We park in a public lot near the post office and find a cache about 20 feet away. We start down the street and almost immediately it begins to rain. It is right around noon, so we duck into the Arena Bar and Grill right across from the Olympic Center (presumably the site of the Miracle on Ice hockey game), and order lunch to wait out the rain. Lunch is good. I stick to iced tea since Phil is living up to his wings and beer lunch plan, and the beer is flowing liberally around the table. We take our time as the rain is coming down hard and steady. This would not be a good day to be attempting Marcy, or any other mountain for that matter, but the parking lot for the trailheads were all full when we left, so there are a lot of hikers getting wet out there today.
Lunch drags out a while as we wait for the rain to let up, but eventually it does and we head back to the van. There isn't much to see, so we restock the beer coolers at a place on the way out of town and head back to the campground.
2:55pm - Back at camp. The rains are mostly over with just a little dripping from the trees overhead, so we pull out the chairs and sit around and talk, read, or whatever. There is a red bellied woodpecker working around the bases of the trees all around us, pecking very lightly. Pretty.
I feel like doing something, so I briefly consider hiking around the lake, or over to Mount Jo, but the skies are still somewhat dark and I'm not sure what the weather is going to do. Staying and being lazy wins out.
Next... Dinner Feast
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