Tidbits
Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…
Photos
2nd Adirondacks Weekend
October 23, 2009, 9:14 pm
Over the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, we went to Adirondacks park in Upstate New York. We figured it would be good to go somewhere in the US on a Canadian long weekend, but alas, they have their US Columbus Day weekend then as well. The last time we were there was during Canada Day 2007.
I would say the High Peaks at Adirondacks has some of the most challenging hikes within driving distance from Toronto. They may not be real mountains, but they are sure steep and there is lots of scrambling involved. It was nice enough in the summer, but it is also a really nice place to go for fall colours.
We left from Toronto on Friday afternoon, got stuck in traffic until Oshawa (why is there always traffic around Oshawa??), crossed the border at 1000 Islands (no wait), and finally arrived at our hotel at Lake Placid at midnight. The roads leading into the park is great fun to drive at night… We stayed at the Golden Arrow Resort, which was a bit pricey, but because it’s a long weekend and we committed last minute (always rainy!), we tried our best.
We did Gothics on Saturday, parking at the Ausable Club and taking the route that took us by Rainbow Falls. It was drizzly and grey and we had a fairly late start (10ish). We weren’t even halfway up when we saw people coming down. They told us it was snowing at the peak. Well then. But by the time we got up there, everything has melted and the sun came out. Unfortunately, we only made it to Pyramid Peak, which was still a little ways from Gothics Peak, and it was 3 pm already. Since it gets dark around 6, we decided we better start heading down because we do NOT want to be descending on those trails in the dark.
The most annoying thing about this peak though, is that you have to walk 3 miles on a dirt road to get to the trail head. We planned it so that we would get to the road by sundown, as we can walk a road in the dark. We made it just in time. Well I made it just in time, I was slow, as my hiking boots were a little too small and my toes were very unhappy. I also felt it quite a bit in the knees too, ack, getting old?!
Here is the route of our failed Gothics climb. It still took us 10 hours from start to finish, even though the bulk of the distance was on a road. That might be why it wasn’t as crippling as our last hike there, and everyone could walk the next day.
Still, we decided to forgo any serious hikes and settled for a simple stroll up Baxter. It is suppose to be a local favourite in the fall, as it has really nice views of the surrounding high peaks. They were right, and it also didn’t hurt that Sunday was a really beautiful day, blue skies, sun, not too cold. Our Baxter route.
Rest of the time, we chilled around town. Found some great deals at the local EMS (Kinda like REI for the East Coast), did some wine hunting. We had this really nice Oregon Pinot at a steakhouse, Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, but was unable to find it at the local wine stores. For such a small tourist town, Lake Placid had a lot of wine stores.
We had an unfortunate incident during the last night of the hotel stay. The toilet was making gurgling noises, but we thought nothing of it, until I went to use it and suddenly noticed sewage coming out of the bathtub drain. The sewer was backing up in our section of the hotel (we were on the ground floor) and they had to move a couple of rooms. Lucky for them it was Sunday night so they actually had free room, Sat night they had no vacancy. In some rooms, the tub filled and spilled out to the floor. They compensated us though, so it’s all good.
More photos uploaded to Facebook.
Tagged: Travels
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