The Adirondack Park

You see things in upstate New York sometimes.

Things that you know your friends from other states would look at with curiosity:



Things that you're not sure if you should be offended by or not:



Things that make you scratch your head:



"Worms? Ice? Beer? You sure you don't want books? Because we also have books."

You see a lot of really pretty things, too, though.







The week before last I drove home to spend a week with my parents. I usually only go home at Thanksgiving, because summer is a busy time on campus, so I don't usually get to go to camp when I got home, since it's deep in the Adirondack Park, and that's not a place you want to drive to in heavy snow. Since I went home in summer, though, it was warm enough to go up to camp for a few days, something my parents do pretty much all the time since they are retired now.

Our camp is on Long Lake:



which I've always thought is the place where A Place in the Sun is set, but it turns out that's actually Loon Lake. Even more confusing, the actual murder that the story is based on took place on Big Moose Lake, but what it boils down to is that, while our camp is really pretty:



Montgomery Clift never drowned Shelly Winters on film there.

Still, it's peaceful and shockingly cold. I expected it to be a little cold, since we were in the mountains, but the second morning I was there it was 39 degrees Fahrenheit.

In summer.

I packed shorts and t-shirts, and a polo in case we went somewhere nice to eat.

It wasn't that bad, though. Mom turned on the fireplace and Dad let me borrow a pair of sweatpants to get my steps in. I got most of them walking the four mile round trip from camp to Buttermilk Falls:







and then in the three days when we were at camp we went all over the Adirondack Park: Tupper Lake, Lake Placid, Blue Mountain Lake, Long Lake, and some other lakes I can't remember. We went to antique stores, general stores, candy stores, popcorn shops, and out to eat a few times, and one morning I also hiked the grounds of The Wild Center, including the Wild Walk:







which rises to a height of three stories off the ground and includes a giant bird's nest that you can climb into:







The rest of the grounds were really pretty, too:



and I encountered this statue that I thought was of a cat pooping, because I didn't see the rabbit out in front at first:



It was a nice trip, and I may think about doing it again.

If I do, I'll have to take more time, since I spent almost half of the trip in the car.