11 years ago today, Day 33

Eleven years ago today I went from Syracuse to Lake Placid, through the Adirondacks -- again, the locals call them mountains, but as I said in my journal for this date, "then I headed up into what turned out to be surprisingly steep hills.  Easterners may call their up and down country mountains, but I'm afraid one of my few prejudices as a Westerner is my unwillingness to call anything less than seven or eight thousand feet tall a mountain."

The Adirondacks were another place on my list that I'd always wanted to visit because of a book,  Woodswoman, by Anne LaBastille.  And for their rather prominent place in American history.  They may just be hill-height, but they do pack a punch.

Also, they provided me with my first view of a flock of turkeys in the wild:

Gobble-gobble.

My first stop was in the town of Rome, just on the edge of the Adirondack Park, where I did a bit of grocery shopping, and bought and mailed a get well card for my oldest brother-in-law, who, my mother had told me the day before during my weekly call, had gone into the hospital to have an angioplasty, but she said, was doing fine. Then I headed up into the hills.  The foliage, which I'd been following ever since I left Minnesota, really hit its peak here, too:

This is probably Long Lake.

I at lunch at the small hamlet of Long Lake, in a café that turned out to be mostly a bar.  But they had good soup -- not quite to the standards of the Holy Grail of Soup I'd had in Minnesota, but still pretty darned good. 

After lunch I drove past Saranac Lake, with its fancy historic cottages:

And on into Lake Placid, where it took me quite some time to find a reasonably-priced motel.  The next day was Sunday and I needed my day to rest and do all my usual Sunday things, plus I wanted to prowl Lake Placid and go to the Olympics Museum.   I did eventually find one, although I discovered why it was so cheap later that night.

I really liked the Adirondacks.  They were exactly what I thought they'd be, and it was exactly the right time of year to be there.  If only they'd liked me [wry g].