Sunday, July 26, 2009
Our current campsite was reserved tonight by someone else, so we had to either head down the road or try finding a different site here for a few more days. Since the ultimate goal of this trip is to see Nova Scotia, we figured we ought to start moving in that direction.
After a hot shower, which bordered on a sublime mystical experience, we drove into Saranac. On the way, we saw a bald eagle on the side of the road tearing at some carrion, and it rose up alongside us. That was special. Too bad Carol didn't have time to get a picture. Anyway, the plan was to to use the Saranac library's wi-fi again, to look up some stuff and update the glob before pushing off for Plattsburgh. However, provincial upstate New York does not believe in opening public facilities on Sundays so it looked like we were out of luck - or were we? Taking a seat on the bench outside the library, I fired up the laptop and lo and behold, there was the wi-fi connection. Pretty slick, I said to Carol. I like it when she marvels at my occasional ingenuity.
After she took a few more pictures of this enchanting little town, we headed toward Lake Placid. We only passed through it, but it looked about as cool a town gets. There's the lake, skiing areas, biking trails and the buildings were architecturally quite scenic. I kind of likened it to an east coast version of Aspen. The winter olympics were held here in 1980 and they are still profiting from it. The scene looked young and hip and at the moment was very crowded. On the day we arrived there was an international triathlon in progress, and half the town's traffic was detoured to keep the course clear. It's certainly a place I'd like to see again. In the mean time we still needed to get out of the Adirondacks if we were ever going to get to Canada. Rolling down the highway, in the direction of Lake Champlain, we thought of how pleasant our time had been in this unexpected area. I further considered that in spite of having been born in New York City, I'd never been up this way. Such a wonderful playground right in my own backyard and I never knew it existed. What a shame. We will miss the gingerbread style architecture we've seen all across upstate New York, and the appealing landscape in general.
By the time we got out of the mountains it was dark and I couldn't find a remote place to pull the Casita over, so we stayed the night in a campground at Keenesville that had a long, winding driveway with about twenty 5 MPH signs. More specifically, they were hand-painted signs, hanging in trees, that read, “5 miles a hour”. What were we in for?
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