ADK Adventures

I've been too busy to provide a full write-up on our vacation since returning a week ago.

Fortunately, Kris took care of that over on the Rooney Train.

I did get around to posting the video up above. I also shared some pictures on Facebook. Note: you don't have to be a registered Facebook user to view them.

Autumn in the Adirondacks

There is nothing like the great outdoors to put everything in perspective.

Today is a perfect example.

We went to visit Kris’ parents for the night yesterday. The fall foliage is just about at its peak in the Adirondacks. So you can just imagine how beautiful the drive was.

Unfortunately, the emphasis is on the word “drive.” Enjoying the scenery from a car at 55 mph is not the same as getting out and soaking it all up.

So on our way back home today we made time to do just that. We stopped at the Adirondack Visitor Interpretive Center at Paul Smith’s College – a beautiful location we’ve visited many times before and will likely visit again.

We did a quick hike on one of the trails we haven’t done before. It took us through the woods, out to the edge of Barnum Pond and then back on a boardwalk through an area that’s usually swampy but seemed pretty dry today.

The colors were spectacular. I don’t think the photos I took do them justice. But it was much more than just the views. Kris kept ooing and ahing over the different trees giving off an unmistakably autumn aroma.

When we were on the latter half of the hike – enjoying the sights and smells and watching kids trot along the trail ahead of us – it hit me that I felt completely at peace. All thoughts of money, work or any of life’s other demands had melted away. I was experiencing a perfect feeling of contentment. I wish I could feel like that every day.

Now Kris and I are talking a lot about becoming “46ers” – climbing all 46 of the Adirondack high peaks. We figure that if we can climb two or three a year, then we’ll achieve 46er status by the time we’re in our mid-50s.

I took a lot of pictures on our hike today and yesterday during a brief stop in Lake Placid. I uploaded most of them to Facebook.

One of my regrets in life is that I never took a photography class in school. I love taking pictures and always hope to capture “something special.” Unfortunately, most of the pictures never work out the way I envisioned them in my mind.

Back in the swing of things

We were gone on vacation all last week. Since returning I have been too busy, too tired or too lazy to provide a write up of all of our activities.

Fortunately, my better half was none of those things. She recapped the whole trip on our other blog. So you can read all about it on The Rooney Train and check out the pictures I uploaded to Facebook.

In other news, I thoroughly enjoyed the Olympics. No matter what was on, I found it all to be pretty compelling TV (I actually stayed up until 2 a.m. one night watching a couple of Chinese guys play for the gold in ping-pong).

But what was fun was the fact that Nolan was really into it. Whatever was on – women’s gymnastics, track & field, volleyball, rowing – he was glued to it. He couldn’t get enough. At age 8, I think this was probably the first time he was really aware of the Olympics and he thought the whole thing was pretty cool. So it was great sharing it with him.

We’ve been to Lake Placid many times and have told him over and over how the Olympics were held there before. But I don’t think that really meant anything to him until now. I’m anxious to see if he gets as excited over the Winter Olympics in 2010.

With the Olympics gone and our vacation over, there is unfortunately no denying that fall is right around the corner. Next week Nolan and Thomas go back to school and we will soon be up to our necks in homework, Cub Scouts, fall travel baseball, etc. It’s been a great summer and I’m sorry to see it go.

Back from Burlington

We're catching our breath after a whirlwind of family activity.

It started last week with Thomas' birthday, which we celebrated twice. The first was on Thursday, the day of his actual birthday. We had family over dinner -- including my mom, my sister Annie and her family, and my sister Mary Ellen who was up visiting from Kentucky. Then on Saturday we had his kid party with some of his pre-school classmates.

I still can't believe he's 5 years old. In a lot of ways he's still a little pipsqueek, but the time is going by fast!

Sunday we left for Burlington. As Kris pointed out, we were probably the only ones who went north for spring break. We visited the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory, ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center, the Lake Champlain Chocolate Factory and the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory.

Yeah, I know...that's a lot of factories. We didn't set out for our mini-vacation to be one big factory tour -- it just sort of worked out that way.

Besides all the factories (and one museum) we also took the ferry across the lake on our way home.



The scenery was beautiful. It's been a long time since I was last in Burlington, and I forgot what a spectacular view they have of the Adirondacks from the other side of the lake. Staring at the mountainous horizon was one of my favorite parts of the trip -- that and the chocolate!

Below is a slide show of photos from our trip. And you can read a lot more details about the birthday activities and our Burlington adventures over on the Rooney Train.

Last trip of the summer

We made our final camping trip of the summer over the weekend with a return to Old Forge.

In the five years that we’ve been camping, this is the first time that we’ve ever repeated a campground (not counting our stays at Uncle Rush’s cabin this year and in 2005). Usually we always try to pick a different spot, but we enjoyed Limekiln Lake so much last year that we went back this year.

Our campsite was even better this time. This year we were right on the water. The panoramic shot above is the view from our site.

Being on the water also meant that we had some extra visitors. As soon as we arrived, a duck heard us and swam over to the shore. He came out of the water, hopped up the embankment and then waddled right over to the picnic table where we were eating lunch. We didn’t give him any food, but he was persistent. He returned several times, and with reinforcements. The ducks were obviously used to getting free handouts.

We also made a return visit to Enchanted Forest Water Safari. Once again, I let the family pick any slide in the park for me to go down. This time they wanted me to go down “The Shadow” – a 42-foot-tall twisty, curvy tube that sends you sliding down pretty fast.

Nolan wanted to try to The Shadow too, which really surprised me. I remember how scared he was of most of the rides at Disney World and last year it took us while to convince him to try the kiddy slides at Water Safari. This time he seemed all into it. He stood in line, but had a change of heart at the last minute. That’s probably just was well. The ride was faster and little scarier than I thought it would be.

We were supposed to stay for two nights, but with the end of our busy summer in sight the fatigue is starting to set in. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want summer to end. But we’ve been doing so much that our heart wasn’t completely into this trip. We might have skipped the whole thing, but the kids (ok, and me too) were looking forward to Water Safari. So we only went for one night instead.

Next year we might take a break from tent camping and stick to cabins. But you never know. That’s what we say now. Maybe by next summer we’ll be anxious to break out the camping gear again.

BTW, it was cloudy the one night we stayed (in fact, there was a thunderstorm overnight). So we didn’t see any of the meteor shower. Bummer.

Here are some more photos from the trip…

This and that

There’s been a lot going on lately that’s been blogworthy, but I just haven’t had the time to get to it all here…

• Kris and the kids are keeping quite busy this week with Vacation Bible School. Everyone seems to be enjoying it.
• We visited Kris’ parents last weekend. Grandma had redecorated the room the boys usually stay in. The décor includes some of their favorites: the Yankees, Spider-Man and SpongeBob SquarePants. They loved it.
• Along the way we made stops in Schroon Lake and Ticonderoga to complete our collection of commemorative Adirondack pins. Unfortunately, the Ticonderoga Chamber of Commerce was closed when we stopped by. So that’s the only pin we’re missing in the set.
• I finished “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in about a week. Kris is reading it now. I loved it and was very satisfied with the ending. There’s lots I could say about it, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone still looking forward to reading it.
• I’ve discovered a great new show – the BBC drama “Jekyll.” Joe Video has been telling for a while to check this out. It’s written by the same guy who has penned some of the best of the new “Doctor Who” episodes. I believe it recently started running on BBC America. I don’t get that channel. So I had to find it on the Internets. However you find it, it’s worth checking out. Here's a trailer.
  

Silver Lake Slideshow

I haven't had a chance yet to sit down and put together a whole video of our vacation, with moving and still pictures and music and whole nine yards like I had wanted. In the meantime, here's a Picasa slidehow...

Adirondack adventures

Well, in about nine hours I will be back at the daily grind. I’ve been on vacation since July 12, and it’s been terrific!

Actually, the vacation started with Nolan’s birthday – 7-years-old! We had his party at a nearby park with a really cool playground. He invited a few friends from school. They goofed around on the playground, had a kickball game and ended the party with a water gun fight.

Two days later we left town to spend a week at Kris’ uncle’s camp on Silver Lake, in the heart of the Adirondacks. It was a full week of hiking, fishing, swimming and other outdoor fun.

We spent our first day there with Kris’ family. Her sister and brother-in-law were up visiting her folks that weekend. So all four of them came out to the lake for the afternoon.

The Silver Lake Bog Preserve is walking distance from the cabin. We all set out to walk that on Sunday, but pets aren’t allowed in the preserve. So Thomas and I took Chester back to the cabin while Kris and Nolan continued with the hike. The route leads out to the bluffs overlooking the lake with a nice view of Whiteface Mountain in the distance. They came back with some nice pictures. Hopefully Thomas and I can make the hike next time (sorry, Chester).

Meanwhile, Thomas, Chester and I were having our own adventure back in the cabin. Our friendly game of Monopoly was interrupted by the discovery of a chipmunk inside the cabin. We chased him around from room to room before eventually running him out of the house not long before Kris and Nolan got back. The whole escapade was one the highlights of our trip for Thomas.

Monday brought one of my highlights—our trip to the summit of Whiteface. We drove up the Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway, making stops along the way to take in the view (that’s where the panoramic shot above was taken). From the end of the road, it’s just a rocky one-fifth of a mile hike to the top of the mountain. We all made it—even Chester, perhaps the world’s only mountain-climbing Basset hound.

The view is absolutely breathtaking. I wish I could have spent more time up there taking it all in. I could spend all day just sitting there soaking up that scenery.

On Tuesday we hopped in the canoe and paddled down to the beach. It’s about a half-hour canoe ride, but once you arrive there you have a shallow, sandy beach all to yourself. It’s great for the kids. We actually didn’t swim a whole lot on this trip. The water temperature was never much more than 72 degrees. Maybe we were being wimps about it. But we did get in the water a few times, including this day at the beach.

Wednesday turned out to be our biggest hiking day. Despite the fact it rained earlier that morning and looked like it could rain again any minute, Kris declared, “We Rooneys are hearty folk!” And with that we threw on our rain ponchos and headed up Silver Lake Mountain. Round trip that was a 1.8 mile trek (and it never did rain again).

Later in the day, on kind of a whim, we drove out to the Adirondack Visitor Interpretive Center at Paul Smith’s College. This is a great, family-friendly stop that I recommend for everyone. There are some hands-on exhibits; live birds of prey and miles of nicely groomed, easy to hike trails. After spending some time in the butterfly house, we wound up hiking a couple of the trails (see the panoramic view of the Heron Marsh below), for a total of another 1.3 miles.

Thursday was our only real washout with the weather. But we made the most of it. Nolan recently declared fish are his favorite animal. So we paid a visit to the Adirondack Fish Hatchery and learned about how the fish are bred and used to stock the ponds and lakes. They had some impressive looking landlocked salmon when we were there.

Friday we went into Lake Placid and hiked some of the Brewster Peninsula Nature Trails. The village was bustling with people in town for the Iron Man Triathlon. It was about as crowded as Lake Placid gets, but there weren’t many people on these trails. We thought it was kind of neat that we found a scenic place to enjoy views of the lake that a lot of the tourists in town probably didn’t even know about.

We had planned to leave first thing Saturday morning, but in typical Rooney fashion we wound up leaving Friday night instead. It just seemed easier that way.

So that was our big vacation for the summer. We took a ton of great pictures. Hopefully in the next few days I'll be able to throw together some sort of slideshow.

In the meantime, life now returns to normal. We’ve got one more camping trip planned before the summer is over.

The Dead Zone

If you read this blog with any regularity, then you know we have a fondness for the Adirondacks. We take many of our vacations there. We camp there. And a few times a year we make the drive up the Northway and through the Lake Placid region to visit Kris’ family (and you’ll note Kris uses the screen name “ADKmom”).

With all that said, I believe the time has come for better cell service along the Northway.

Once you get above Lake George, turn off your phone and save the battery because you won’t get a signal again until you get close to Plattsburgh.

That proved deadly last week for a Brooklyn couple. Their car went off the road in the middle of the night near North Hudson (close to Exit 29). Due to their injuries, neither of them could get out of the car. They tried to call 911, but there was no signal.

Their car was obscured by trees. So passing motorists had no idea they were there.

After being trapped for 13 hours in sub-freezing weather, the husband died. He didn’t die from his crash injuries. It was the hypothermia that got him.

Nineteen hours later a state trooper found the car and rescued the wife. She’s expected to make a full recovery, but will have to live with the horrible memory of watching her husband die next to her.

One phone call could have kept him alive and prevented much of her suffering.

Environmentalists have long been opposed to cell towers in the Adirondacks, saying it would spoil the pristine view.

Look, the Adirondacks are one of my favorite places on Earth, but I say get over it. We’re not talking about putting towers in the heart of the Adirondack Park. We’re talking about placing them along a well-traveled, major highway.

However, the issue might be a lot more complicated than that. Fred LeBrun points out today that it's really the root of all evil—money—that’s keeping the towers out.

I don’t care what the reason is. This is the 21st century. We can transmit pictures back from Mars. We should be able to make a phone call from the side of the road in North Hudson. It’s time for someone to sort this out and get it done.

The bear basics

When we went camping we experienced something new. We were told that Limekiln Lake was a "Class A campground" for bears. Therefore, every site came equipped with a "bear locker" to store all of our food in.

Normally we keep food and anything else we don't want animals getting into locked up in our car. But this time we had specific instructions to use this locker and not our car.

As a result, Kris was a little nervous about running into a bear during the trip--particularly during a late night run to the bathroom. We never saw a bear in our campground, but one did cross the road in front of us during our drive home.

Anyway, maybe it's just as well we didn't spot this story before our trip:

DEC officers shoot, kill agressive black bear

SARANAC LAKE, N.Y. (AP) - A team of state environmental conservation officers and wildlife experts shot and killed a black bear that had shown aggressive behavior toward people hiking in Adirondack High Peaks region.

The Department of Environmental Conservation say the bear killed early Monday morning was a male who was more than 20 years old and weighed about 350 pounds.

DEC officials say the officers shot the bear when it entered a camp site looking for food. The agency says it was the same bear that had entered lean-tos where people were staying on three different occasions last month.

In one incident, a man lured the bear away from his son after the animal had cornered his son in a lean-to. In another incident, campers had to hit the bear with their hiking sticks when it became aggressive.

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)