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After the reception we went back to Katie's parents' house to change out
of our once-in-a-lifetime clothes and head for New York. We found a little
surprise on the car, thanks Dad and David! We kept a tally of the
number of honks we received on the way to NY: 31. It was quite amusing to see
how happy other people were for us.
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We stopped just outside of Cleveland for the night and drove to Saranac
Lake, NY the next day. About 3/4 of a mile back a one lane dirt drive
we arrived at "Merry Weather" cabin. What a cute, secluded little cabin!
Running water and power but no TV or telephone. Just as we expected,
and it suited us perfectly.
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There are several cabins on the same dirt lane, collectively
called
British Soldiers Camp, named after a tiny lichen found growing on
logs. We found some British Soldiers growing on a fence post on our
way to the Adirondack Mountain Club's (ADK) Heart Lake facility.
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A short walk from the cabin is McKenzie Pond. Though called a "pond"
it felt more like a small lake to us. It is a secluded, private pond where
Loons are often seen and heard. There were several canoes and a rowboat
to take out onto the pond, which we liked to do in the evenings. More on
the loons later.
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This was the only bear we saw during our visit and hike, even though the
ADK was reporting an exceptionally bad year for bears stealing hiker's
food. We stopped at a giant taxidermy/giftstore place in Keene, NY. They
had bears, moose, lions... pretty much any animal you can think of. An
interesting place, but we resisted the urge to buy one of their $1000+
dead animals.
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Lake Placid was home to the winter olympics in 1932 & 1980. These are the
towers for the high and low ski jumps. There are several large olympic
facilities in Lake Placid and many olypic athletes train there year
round. We toured through one of the training facilities.
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On the way back to the cabin from Keene we pulled off in someone's driveway
to take this picture. The highest peak in the picure is Algonquin Peak.
Further to the right is a "V" (pretty much in the center of the picure), that
is Indian Pass/Wallface Mountain. The next week we hiked up to the top of
the pass and also climbed Algonquin.
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We had seen a flyer advertising scenic flights out of Lake Placid Airport
earlier in the week. While driving around we
stumbled upon the airport. Five minutes later our pilot Jim was explaining
what to do if we felt we were going to be sick while in the air. It was a gorgeous day
for an aerial tour of the High Peaks Region of the Adirondack Mountains.
The ride was choppy in the small plane but no regurgitation took place.
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Jim flew us over the range of large mountains leading to Mount Marcy (the
highest mountain in the Adirondacks). Aaron had his GPS unit running
during the flight. After getting back home he downloaded the data to
Garmin's Mapsource software and created a map that shows the actual path
of our flight. According to the GPS unit, we reached a max altitude
of 6200' and a top speed of 147mph.
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While Aaron was in the front seat playing with the GPS unit and trying to
figure out how Jim was flying the plane, Katie was in the back seat snapping
through a roll of film. This picture shows Algonquin Peak (tall mountain
in the center) with Lake Colden below. The mountain coming in from the right with the
slides on it is Mount Colden and Avalanche Pond is slightly
visible at the base of Colden.
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This pictures gives an excellent view of Wallface Mountain. The cliff
on the right side of Wallface is the second highest vertical face east
of the Mississippi River. We flew north from here, back to a gentle landing
at Lake Placid Airport.
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Katie is not as big as a Bald Eagle. This is a sign at Paul Smith's
Interpretive Center in Paul Smiths, NY. They had a nice display of
the area's natural history as well as some trails around a marsh. We walked
one of the trails and found the beaver dams we were told about
but we didn't spot any beavers.
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On Route 86, north of Lake Placid, we visited the High Falls Gorge. We
had to pay a couple bucks to walk through the gorge on sidewalks bolted
to the walls of the gorge. It was definately worth it to see these
impressive falls.
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Further north on Route 86 we went to see Whiteface Mountain. This is where
the downhill skiing events were held during the Olympic games. We rode
a gondola to the top of Little Whiteface, the peak to the left of
Whiteface in this picture. It was so humid that the view of the
surrounding area was obscured by haze, so we didn't take any pictures
up there.
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Aaron made a new friend at an ice cream store.
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The alarm went off at 5:30AM... Katie drug Aaron down to McKenzie Pond to
find some loons. We floated around for about 30 minutes without seeing
anything, then we spotted two loons swimming in the distance. A third
joined them and they ended up swimming within 30' of our canoe! We
watched and listened to them for 45 minutes before they slipped out of
sight. Watching birds in a pond from within the pond was a new one for
us. It was worth getting up for.
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This is a self-taken picture we snapped before saying goodbye to Merry Weather.
We very much enjoyed our time spent there, but now it was time to do some
hiking. We drove to the ADK Heart Lake parking lot to begin our hike.
Be sure to check out the hiking pages!
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After the hike, we spent a night in Lake Placid before starting back home.
We stopped in Blue Mountain, NY to visit the Adirondack Museum. We needed
to make Niagara Falls by that night so we were only able to spend a couple
hours at the museum. The museum had twenty-one exhibit buildings with
displays on the history of the Adirondacks. The sign in the
picture suggests that Aaron needs a buggy.
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Another couple took this picture of us with Blue Mountain Lake in the
background. It was a gorgeous day.
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We made it to Niagara Falls and we watched a lot of moving water the next
morning. Once again we had to keep moving so we could make it back to
Ohio that night. Neither one of us had seen Niagara Falls before, so now
we can say that we have.
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We were away on our honeymoon for two weeks and we thoroughly enjoyed
our time shared together. We went back to Katie's parents' house, developed our
16 rolls of film, packed up some of Katie's stuff, went to Aaron's parents house,
packed Katie and Aaron's stuff in a Uhaul, and moved to our new
aparment in Columbus! What an exciting time in our lives!
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