I wake up at 6:00 am in a small hotel in Upper Jay, NY, slightly north of Lake Placid and a proverbial stone’s throw away from the town of Wilmington, which is where the bulk of this trip will really be taking place. We’d driven in late the night before, with the intention of spending a nice quiet weekend together in the Adirondacks. I really enjoyed the area when I was up here with Sean climbing Whiteface. So I wanted to bring D up here to see what she thought of it.
It was early in the day, so I laid on the couch to read the book I had brought with me, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami. I had read his Kafka on the Shore many years ago and thought it was brilliant. So far, I’m enjoying it.
Once D wakes up, we walk across the street to the Adirondack Mountain Cafe, which has a decent breakfast and a terrible cup of coffee. We sit at a small table, enjoying the morning and people watching while talking. We’re in no rush to do much of anything today. We have biking plans but they are loose, and we have all the time in the world, as they say.
Following breakfast we walk back to the hotel and officially check-in. The owner had left the key under the mat the night before, because I had told her we were coming in pretty late. The hotel is a throwback, to say the least. You can’t make reservations online which is probably why we got the place at all. I called a few days earlier and she still had a room, which was a bit lucky as everything else was booked.
After paying for the room, we explored the stream behind the hotel, which you could hear from the room very clearly and added a nice white noise no matter where you were.
We decided to drive up to the top of Whiteface because we had lots of time to burn before we planned to meet our friends at 1:00 to ride. While waiting at the toll booth to pay for the road up, a friend of ours came cruising down on his road bike. We would later trade some texts but never managed to link up, as we had other plans that night.
The drive up was considerably faster than riding my bike up, and probably a bit more enjoyable at most levels. Maybe not quite as rewarding but we did hike up to the top of the mountain, which is something we hadn’t done in our road bike shoes when we were here last time.
You could see Lake Champlain from the top, which was neat. There were a lot of people up there, and we later found out there was literally an elevator to bring people up. I’m not sure what I think of this, but if people want to get up there, far be it from me to say they shouldn’t be able to go via any means they so desire. You can walk if you like, or climb if you like. To be fair, we drove most of the way up so it’s not like we had a pulpit to stand on there.
Once we were done, we drove back down the mountain and burned up 6 months of brake pads on the way down. Then we stopped to get ice cream, because ice cream. This was effectively our lunch.
Eventually we got to the parking lot for the 1:00 ride which was with one of the NICA kids on our team, Sammy, plus her dad Steve who is a coach along with us. We’d spent a good amount of the NICA season together so we got to know them pretty well over the past 6 months. They were planning on giving us a tour of the Flume Trail System.
We started up the hill and Sammy was having back issues, so she pulled the plug and Steve went back with her. We finished out the loop then did a second loop on the other side by ourselves. In all, we were out for 3 hours but rode less than that. It was a varied trail system, and while some of the trails were solid I’m not sure it’s a destination just yet. Maybe one day.
The Strava link can be found here.
After the ride we went back to the hotel to clean up but the most memorable thing about that pit stop was the peach we brought. They were really fantastic and it’s a great time of year when the peaches are amazing. That would be right now, just incredibly good.
We sat in the freezing cold river behind the hotel briefly before going back to the room to shower up. Then we went into Lake Placid proper to find something to eat, which ended up being the Purple Saige Bistro, which was excellent. I was not a huge fan of the downtown in general, as this is where every schmuck in a 50 mile radius goes to get drunk. But the place we picked to eat was incredibly good. I would go back here in a minute.
After dinner we drove over to Lori & Steve’s house for a front-yard fire and some s’mores. It was a nice, relaxing way to end the day, and it was really awesome to have some friends to hang out with for the night. Conversation was good, and of course who doesn’t like a good smore or 4? We hung out for a few hours before heading back to the hotel to do some reading, some planning for the next day, and then hitting the sack for a good night of sleep.
Traveling Normandy 
[…] day did, at 6:00 am with me sitting on the couch reading my book, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. See yesterday’s post for more on that. The day again is as lazy as we want it to be, and there’s no reason to rush […]
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