The Traveling Pine

20 & 21 June 2022 Our last day of vacation was a pretty relaxed day. It started a little earlier than the past few days, but nothing super early. We finished the last of the sweet orange rolls, showered, and packed up our things. We were on the road before 10am.   We had about a 2 1/2 hour drive ahead of us, but like the last long drive, it was very manageable. We only had a few options when it came to driving from Saranac Lake to Burlington. Lake Champlain makes it a challenge to cross between NY and VT. Ross, being the expert navigator, as he has been this entire trip, found a route that uses a car ferry to cross the lake. I had never driven onto a ferry before, so we figured, why not?! It was easy peasy. I just had to follow the car in front of me and the people pointing me in the right direction. Once we were on board, I didn’t want to get out of the car, but Ross was all about it, so I eventually followed. It was a neat, short trip, but I’m glad we did it. We snacked on so...

 19 June 2022 Happy Father’s Day to all those dads of humans and fur babies alike! We kept our same MO of the past few days and slept in until 9-10ish. How am I going to recover from all of this and get back into a work schedule??? That’s a problem for another day. Today we worked on the sweet orange rolls again, showered and headed out for our one planned adventure - The Wild Center in Tupper Lake. The Wild Center is about 25 minutes from Saranac Lake. It’s a neat indoor/outdoor science/natural history type center. We started with the indoor exhibits. There was displays about glaciers, creatures native to the Adirondacks, plants, weather, etc. One of the most exciting exhibits was the otters! They had two otters swimming around in an enclosure and they are super cute! We sat and watched them play around for a little bit before moving on. We also saw plenty of fish and turtles. There were two turtles having a little battle over one particular spot on a rock. One was occupying said ...

 18 June 2022 Today started off nice and slow. We didn’t even get out of bed until 10am. That’s what vacation is for, right?! It might have been because neither of us slept great again. The night before was too hot, last night we left the A/C on and it was too loud. Goldilocks scenario?? Eventually we crawled out of our slumber, heated up a few more orange rolls for breakfast, and got the day moving. The weather wasn’t going to be the best, so we looked for something a little more indoor focused to do. Since Lake Placid was the site of two Olympic Games, there are some Olympic training centers near by. We saw that Mt. Van Hoevenberg, just a few miles away had some interactive things to do, including a climbing wall. We brought our gear, so we decided to check it out! It was a little chillier than I expected it to be this morning - a brisk 45 degrees! A big change from the rest of the trip, but a hoodie and my new King Arthur beanie was all I needed. We hopped in the car and took th...

 17 June 2022 Our first full day in Lake Placid/Saranac Lake. We both slept so/so since the room was overly warm. Apparently Vermont and upstate New York don’t have central A/C. The room A/C we have in this place is overly loud, so we turned it off for the night. I was up at 4:30 and didn’t get back to sleep until at least 6:30. But we managed and left the A/C running all day today.  Ross and I finished the first dozen sweet orange rolls this morning - which filled me up. Ross still wanted a little more substantial snack before our hike, so we walked down the street to Lakeview Deli. He found a veggie/hummus sandwich and a bottle of tea. We decided to walk to the Baker Mountain trailhead, so we turned right back towards our BnB and kept on walking. The trailhead was less than 20 minutes from our place.  Once we got there, someone had left a great walking stick right at the entrance, which I promptly scooped up. We found the visitor’s log and signed in before we started ou...