Chapter One...The Adirondacks, Little Jersey and a Fort
Sometimes the best family trips result from the most haphazard of planning. And this pretty well describes how our last family trip came together. Three weeks before this trip we didn’t even know where we were going for sure. But with some last minute planning and letting the kids take the lead on where we were heading a trip came together. So during the third week of July we pointed our Tundra Fafhrd towards the Northeast portion of the country and rolled some asphalt under the tires. The Minions decide that they wanted to go revisit some of their favorite spots in the Adirondacks from trips past, but Michelle and I had pretty much written off that area after years of travelling there. To spruce up the trip a bit we decided to do a few days in Vermont as well as that state would be new territory for us.
Heading out on the road the rain came down in a steady curtain from the overcast skies. Quickly we were out of Pennsylvania and rolling through the Southern Tier of New York. Rolling hills and farmlands passed by as we traveled along and the rain started to slack off.
We weren’t in any rush and had put in effect the “Clan Travel Rule” which states…”Ifin’ its historical, scenic or odd just speak up and we’ll check it out.” The first thing to catch our attention was a covered bridge and according to Michelle “All covered bridges must be crossed…no exceptions.”
As we passed along the route the kids kept remarking on all the Duncan Donut shops in every rural town we drove through. Despite their child like pleas we refused to stop…which brought about the “Great Blanket Protest of 2013”. I thought of it as “Occupy Tundra” and made about as much sense as other occupying movements…
As morning turned to midday we stopped at an old A&W drive-in diner complete with bellhops to snag some grub. Allison decided then and there that this was the type of greasy spoon we should open one day.
Finally we were entering the southern tier of the Adirondack Park and found ourselves travelling through some great scenery. Every once in a while we would stop along one of the myriad rock strewn streams to explore and poke around.
After much mucking around we arrived at our chosen campsite of Roger’s Rock, a state run campground just south of Fort Ticonderoga and situated on Lake George. We stopped and registered in at the check in with the rangers and made our way towards are spot. This is when we hit our first set back of this trip. We had entered what appeared to be a refugee camp or as my daughter labeled it “Little Jersey”.
Yes, about every campsite was full of New Jersey people, I have never seen so many badly tattooed, overweight, and loud mouth people in my life. F-bombs came every fourth word or so and that was just the kids and the grandmothers. Camp gear littered each site looking like a tsunami of WalMart debris was deposited as jetsam after a raucous storm. And the empty alcohol bottles…I’ve seen redneck bars with less cast-offs in their dumpsters and parking lots than what was scattered on the ground and over picnic tables here. Food, coolers and cast-offs encircled the tables also. This was the first state I’ve been to that had an open bottle policy in their state parks. It was obvious that there were no bears about, because they would have had a field day here. We drove through the campground roads in a state of disbelief and then came across our campsite. Supposedly it was a drive in site, but actually it was a pull off into a rutted stony ditch barely big enough for the Tundra and having a sever camber. Sleeping in the Maggie just wasn’t going to work here, so back to the check in to find a new site.
We found one, luckily situated between a Vermont couple and some New York folks, and set up camp for the next couple days.
We fixed up some calzones for dinner and listen to the sounds of harmonious nature…check that…we listen to the loud raucous calls of the Jersey Shores.
Allison was not pleased…
As day slipped to night there was no let-up and I was getting pissed, my boy Cam calmly stated that I could not blood eagle the whole campground on my own and suggested I get the ear plugs I use for work out to ease me into sleep. After some grumblin’ and stubbornness I relented and took the kid’s advice and grabbed the only pair of plugs in the truck. Crawling into the Maggie I drifted off to peaceful slumber.
The next morning the kids sounded more like me and were ready to channel their ancient Celtic and Norse ancestors and assault the campground. Apparently they didn’t sleep as well as I. Michelle tossed a cheese Danish their way which calmed them down and thus saved the lives of several hundred obnoxious campers. Good thing I had put the Hewing spears and axes into the lock box before I went to bed.
We left the campground early and made our way out before the yahoos woke up. Allison wanted to return to Whiteface Mountain once again and climb up the footpath to the top, so we headed over to Lake Placid to do so. Along the way we would stop at any spot that perked our interest…
After much poking about we arrived at the start of the toll road to the summit of Whiteface Mountain. But the summit was blanketed by low clouds so we instead headed into the resort town of Lake Placid to check it out. My daughter loves these places, they drive me nuts. But one of my cardinal rules is “that you have to be willing to give up your own bliss to make somebody else happy.” What a dopey rule. So we run through the gauntlet of tourist and resorters and I successfully cleared the town without stopping in some yuppie ass shop. But then the boy spotted a mini-golf course and used his country boy charm on his mother…
So I’m at the first hole of a pirate themed mini-golf course. The boy is talking smack, the daughter has reverted to a giddy eight year old, the wife is enjoying the kids goofiness and I’m happy we stopped because of them all. It starts of well, I sink a hole in one on the first green, the boy shuts up and knows he’s been schooled…
We do the course…I sink four holes in one, pwning my family. Allison comes in last…
From the golf course we could see that the top of Whiteface had cleared off so we headed back over. On the toll road we winded along the bumpy, windy blacktop as we climbed up the mountains flank. Stopping at a pull off, we pulled out the lunch fixins and enjoyed a table with a great view…
Here’s a shot of Fafhrd half way up the mountain.
We reached the top and squeezed through the Castle turnaround and parked the truck. Then it was time to start the climb up the path to reach the peak…
Cam celebrates his successful climb to the top…
Than it was back down the mountain and on the road back to camp, with a few stops added in. One was at a store to buy some extra earplugs for the rest of the Clan. As we drove through the countryside Michelle and I noticed that the Adirondacks aren’t what they use to be. Everything looks run down except for a few popular resort areas. Gates and no trespassing signs are prevalent and abandoned hotels and cabins stand out like sets from a Rob Zombie movie. Old farmsteads return to the earth the resources that they were built from on a regular basis…
As we toured around we found a few dirt roads to explore, nothing to exciting but it was nice to get off the asphalt.
And then we were back in Little Jersey. But wait…what’s this…its late Sunday afternoon and the campground has emptied out by two thirds at least. You can drive down the lanes, you don’t hear the F-word every fifth spoken word out of someone’s mouth, I can see animals scurrying about…much better. The bulk of the cars left have Vermont and New York plates. There is nary a Jersey plate anywhere. Gods be praised. We settled in and cooked up chicken over the coals and some sticky rice with some stir fried veggies. Than it was relatively peaceful despite the New York guy walking down the road screaming “I hate you bastards!” at nobody in particular. The Clan Chief was in a high state of situational awareness for a while.
The next day we decide to take a tour of Fort Ticonderoga as it was place I always had a desire to see. Having grown up on tales of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, Roger’s Rangers and even Benedict Arnold before he went turncoat I loved the history of the place. Here’s a fort built by the French, captured by the English during the French and Indian War, and then captured by the Americans during the Revolutionary war only to be recapture by the English after they lugged some big old cannons to the top of Mount Defiance across the lake from the Fort.
There is only a small portion of the Fort that is original but the reconstruction back in the 1800s did a good job of recreating it. Here’s a view of the Fort from the summit of Mount Defiance.
Entering the ground we walked along the outer bailey…
And then entered the Fort itself…others had beat us here though.
Of course as a diehard black powder and blade guy I went to the Armory first…
Michelle likes to read every plaque and view every diorama, so the kids skittered ahead; I just lingered longer in the Armory.
We poked in every room, examined the architecture, and discussed the merits of the place as a zombie apocalypse shelter. Then we loaded back up and ran up to the top of Mount Defiance. Don’t bother, the view isn’t that good and it’s a little hard to find. On the way back down my passenger front brake started making a noise, but I just checked the pads before I left and knew they were good. I wrote it off as a rotor glazing from all the breaking on the mountains and hoped it settle itself. This was a harbinger of problems to come though.
We tooled around and found a nice hiking trail to explore…
All sweated up we rolled back into camp and it was even emptier, cool. We settled in for some venison steaks and garlic potatoes and the rain started. At first it was sprinkle than it became a steady downpour. We put our Kelty tarp over the Maggie to give us a sheltered entrance at the first sign of rain and it was a good thing we did. It rained hard and steady all night long. Come morning everything was drenched and the kick in the pants was that we were gonna break camp this morning for our run into Vermont. We huddle in the kid’s tent and tried to wait it out but by 10:00 the rain was still steady. Screw it…we jumped to action in a small respite and threw the camp in the back of the truck. Better to be on the road than huddled in a tent. So with a truck bed full of wet gear we headed towards Vermont….
Sometimes the best family trips result from the most haphazard of planning. And this pretty well describes how our last family trip came together. Three weeks before this trip we didn’t even know where we were going for sure. But with some last minute planning and letting the kids take the lead on where we were heading a trip came together. So during the third week of July we pointed our Tundra Fafhrd towards the Northeast portion of the country and rolled some asphalt under the tires. The Minions decide that they wanted to go revisit some of their favorite spots in the Adirondacks from trips past, but Michelle and I had pretty much written off that area after years of travelling there. To spruce up the trip a bit we decided to do a few days in Vermont as well as that state would be new territory for us.
Heading out on the road the rain came down in a steady curtain from the overcast skies. Quickly we were out of Pennsylvania and rolling through the Southern Tier of New York. Rolling hills and farmlands passed by as we traveled along and the rain started to slack off.
We weren’t in any rush and had put in effect the “Clan Travel Rule” which states…”Ifin’ its historical, scenic or odd just speak up and we’ll check it out.” The first thing to catch our attention was a covered bridge and according to Michelle “All covered bridges must be crossed…no exceptions.”
As we passed along the route the kids kept remarking on all the Duncan Donut shops in every rural town we drove through. Despite their child like pleas we refused to stop…which brought about the “Great Blanket Protest of 2013”. I thought of it as “Occupy Tundra” and made about as much sense as other occupying movements…
As morning turned to midday we stopped at an old A&W drive-in diner complete with bellhops to snag some grub. Allison decided then and there that this was the type of greasy spoon we should open one day.
Finally we were entering the southern tier of the Adirondack Park and found ourselves travelling through some great scenery. Every once in a while we would stop along one of the myriad rock strewn streams to explore and poke around.
After much mucking around we arrived at our chosen campsite of Roger’s Rock, a state run campground just south of Fort Ticonderoga and situated on Lake George. We stopped and registered in at the check in with the rangers and made our way towards are spot. This is when we hit our first set back of this trip. We had entered what appeared to be a refugee camp or as my daughter labeled it “Little Jersey”.
Yes, about every campsite was full of New Jersey people, I have never seen so many badly tattooed, overweight, and loud mouth people in my life. F-bombs came every fourth word or so and that was just the kids and the grandmothers. Camp gear littered each site looking like a tsunami of WalMart debris was deposited as jetsam after a raucous storm. And the empty alcohol bottles…I’ve seen redneck bars with less cast-offs in their dumpsters and parking lots than what was scattered on the ground and over picnic tables here. Food, coolers and cast-offs encircled the tables also. This was the first state I’ve been to that had an open bottle policy in their state parks. It was obvious that there were no bears about, because they would have had a field day here. We drove through the campground roads in a state of disbelief and then came across our campsite. Supposedly it was a drive in site, but actually it was a pull off into a rutted stony ditch barely big enough for the Tundra and having a sever camber. Sleeping in the Maggie just wasn’t going to work here, so back to the check in to find a new site.
We found one, luckily situated between a Vermont couple and some New York folks, and set up camp for the next couple days.
We fixed up some calzones for dinner and listen to the sounds of harmonious nature…check that…we listen to the loud raucous calls of the Jersey Shores.
Allison was not pleased…
As day slipped to night there was no let-up and I was getting pissed, my boy Cam calmly stated that I could not blood eagle the whole campground on my own and suggested I get the ear plugs I use for work out to ease me into sleep. After some grumblin’ and stubbornness I relented and took the kid’s advice and grabbed the only pair of plugs in the truck. Crawling into the Maggie I drifted off to peaceful slumber.
The next morning the kids sounded more like me and were ready to channel their ancient Celtic and Norse ancestors and assault the campground. Apparently they didn’t sleep as well as I. Michelle tossed a cheese Danish their way which calmed them down and thus saved the lives of several hundred obnoxious campers. Good thing I had put the Hewing spears and axes into the lock box before I went to bed.
We left the campground early and made our way out before the yahoos woke up. Allison wanted to return to Whiteface Mountain once again and climb up the footpath to the top, so we headed over to Lake Placid to do so. Along the way we would stop at any spot that perked our interest…
After much poking about we arrived at the start of the toll road to the summit of Whiteface Mountain. But the summit was blanketed by low clouds so we instead headed into the resort town of Lake Placid to check it out. My daughter loves these places, they drive me nuts. But one of my cardinal rules is “that you have to be willing to give up your own bliss to make somebody else happy.” What a dopey rule. So we run through the gauntlet of tourist and resorters and I successfully cleared the town without stopping in some yuppie ass shop. But then the boy spotted a mini-golf course and used his country boy charm on his mother…
So I’m at the first hole of a pirate themed mini-golf course. The boy is talking smack, the daughter has reverted to a giddy eight year old, the wife is enjoying the kids goofiness and I’m happy we stopped because of them all. It starts of well, I sink a hole in one on the first green, the boy shuts up and knows he’s been schooled…
We do the course…I sink four holes in one, pwning my family. Allison comes in last…
From the golf course we could see that the top of Whiteface had cleared off so we headed back over. On the toll road we winded along the bumpy, windy blacktop as we climbed up the mountains flank. Stopping at a pull off, we pulled out the lunch fixins and enjoyed a table with a great view…
Here’s a shot of Fafhrd half way up the mountain.
We reached the top and squeezed through the Castle turnaround and parked the truck. Then it was time to start the climb up the path to reach the peak…
Cam celebrates his successful climb to the top…
Than it was back down the mountain and on the road back to camp, with a few stops added in. One was at a store to buy some extra earplugs for the rest of the Clan. As we drove through the countryside Michelle and I noticed that the Adirondacks aren’t what they use to be. Everything looks run down except for a few popular resort areas. Gates and no trespassing signs are prevalent and abandoned hotels and cabins stand out like sets from a Rob Zombie movie. Old farmsteads return to the earth the resources that they were built from on a regular basis…
As we toured around we found a few dirt roads to explore, nothing to exciting but it was nice to get off the asphalt.
And then we were back in Little Jersey. But wait…what’s this…its late Sunday afternoon and the campground has emptied out by two thirds at least. You can drive down the lanes, you don’t hear the F-word every fifth spoken word out of someone’s mouth, I can see animals scurrying about…much better. The bulk of the cars left have Vermont and New York plates. There is nary a Jersey plate anywhere. Gods be praised. We settled in and cooked up chicken over the coals and some sticky rice with some stir fried veggies. Than it was relatively peaceful despite the New York guy walking down the road screaming “I hate you bastards!” at nobody in particular. The Clan Chief was in a high state of situational awareness for a while.
The next day we decide to take a tour of Fort Ticonderoga as it was place I always had a desire to see. Having grown up on tales of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, Roger’s Rangers and even Benedict Arnold before he went turncoat I loved the history of the place. Here’s a fort built by the French, captured by the English during the French and Indian War, and then captured by the Americans during the Revolutionary war only to be recapture by the English after they lugged some big old cannons to the top of Mount Defiance across the lake from the Fort.
There is only a small portion of the Fort that is original but the reconstruction back in the 1800s did a good job of recreating it. Here’s a view of the Fort from the summit of Mount Defiance.
Entering the ground we walked along the outer bailey…
And then entered the Fort itself…others had beat us here though.
Of course as a diehard black powder and blade guy I went to the Armory first…
Michelle likes to read every plaque and view every diorama, so the kids skittered ahead; I just lingered longer in the Armory.
We poked in every room, examined the architecture, and discussed the merits of the place as a zombie apocalypse shelter. Then we loaded back up and ran up to the top of Mount Defiance. Don’t bother, the view isn’t that good and it’s a little hard to find. On the way back down my passenger front brake started making a noise, but I just checked the pads before I left and knew they were good. I wrote it off as a rotor glazing from all the breaking on the mountains and hoped it settle itself. This was a harbinger of problems to come though.
We tooled around and found a nice hiking trail to explore…
All sweated up we rolled back into camp and it was even emptier, cool. We settled in for some venison steaks and garlic potatoes and the rain started. At first it was sprinkle than it became a steady downpour. We put our Kelty tarp over the Maggie to give us a sheltered entrance at the first sign of rain and it was a good thing we did. It rained hard and steady all night long. Come morning everything was drenched and the kick in the pants was that we were gonna break camp this morning for our run into Vermont. We huddle in the kid’s tent and tried to wait it out but by 10:00 the rain was still steady. Screw it…we jumped to action in a small respite and threw the camp in the back of the truck. Better to be on the road than huddled in a tent. So with a truck bed full of wet gear we headed towards Vermont….
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