Post #10: Adirondacks, Lake Placid, NY; September 20 to 25
As has been our normal practice, our moving day turned out to be a rainy day. We moved into northeastern New York to Fish Creek Pond State Park. FCPSP is not far from Lake Placid and is a very large campground with spaces all the way around two lakes with most of the spots backing up to the shoreline. Back when we booked the site, there were almost no spots available, so our site was just across the road from the lake shore. Interestingly enough, the park was only about 15-20% occupied the whole time that we were there. All of the sites are non-hookup, so no water, electric, or sewer, but we’d filled up our water tank and figured that our solar would keep us charged. Unfortunately, our site, like almost all of the 300+ sites in this park, was very tree covered. This meant that we’d need to use our generator for a bit most every day to keep the batteries topped off. The campground limited this to a specific five hours per day, so that did cut into our plans a couple of times. All in all, it was a pretty nice site.
On the 21st, we first visited the Adirondack Visitor Center to pick up some brochures and suggestions for things to do while in the area. From there, we drove up Whiteface Mountain, the fifth highest mountain in New York. From the parking lot, we hiked up the final 1/5-mile, gaining a couple of hundred feet, which gave us a complete 360-degree view of the area. From there, we could see New York, Vermont, and Canada. Instead of walking back, we rode an elevator down through the mountain, then out a 400’+ tunnel bored through the side of the mountain. After the drive backdown the mountain, we went into Lake Placid. There we found that the town was undergoing quite a bit of construction and renovation, from sidewalks to streets to facilities, for the upcoming 2023 FISU World University Winter Games. The volunteer at the visitor center gave us some helpful tips as to what to see in town and what activities were happening that week that we should be sure to enjoy. He directed us to the 1932 Olympic ice rink, where we watched a young girl practicing her figure skating routine, the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” rink where some hockey practice was going on, then to a small, temporary museum covering the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Games. They are in the process of putting in a much larger museum, but we were just a few months early to see it.
We lost the 22nd to rain pretty much the whole day but were able to get out the following day in spite of the 38-degree temperature that morning. In fact, many of the mountains around Lake Placid had snow that day. We went to the Olympic Jumping Complex and rode the gondola to the base of the jump towers, then the elevator to the top of the 108-meter tower. They have an enclosed observation room at the top of the tallest tower, but you’re still able to walk out to the top of the run. I can’t even imagine going down that hill, much less going off the end of it and flying for 100-meters. The best jumpers are never more than about 12-feet off the snow as they soar down the hill, but that still looked pretty scary to me. I was talking to one of the workers at the gondola and he told me that the current jumpers actually fly, where they dropped like a rock back in his jumping days. They had a pair of smaller hills off to the side and he told me that kids as young as 6 years old jump off that hill. Sounds like a good way to get rid of a child, if you ask me. There were supposed to be practice jumpers scheduled for later that day, so we decided that we’d come back to see that later that afternoon. We were able to go watch the freestyle jumpers fly off their ramps, do their mid-air tricks, then land in a large swimming pool. The temperature was in the 50’s, the wind was blowing, and we were freezing. Leaving there, we drove over to Mount Van Hovenburg which is where the bobsled, luge, skeleton, biathlon, and cross-county skiing events are held. That was a very interesting area to explore and decided to come back later to hike that area. Going back to the jumping site, we found that the ski jumping practice wasn’t happening until Sunday, which was to be our departure day.
On the 24th, we went back to Mount Van Hovenburg and hiked to the top. It was a little bit wet and muddy, and the roundtrip hike was about 3.6-miles and a climb and decent of almost 1,000′. The three viewpoints were on the back side of the mountain from the sled runs, but the views were amazing.
On Sunday (25th), we moved a bit south of Albany to Schodack Island State Park. More on that later.
LyndDebTravel 