Category Archives: New York

Lake Placid

Thursday morning we were up early – this is still a habit for me. During the night, a nice Prevost coach pulling a trailer parked at the Lowes. I wish I had taken a picture of it. It was a real beauty. We hit the road around 7:30 and drove RT3 into the Adirondacks. This is a great road – very scenic and the smoothest pavement of the entire trip with not much traffic.

We stopped in the village of Cranberry Lake for breakfast then continued on through Tupper Lake, Saranac Lake and into Lake Placid. Lake Placid is a village with a population of about 5,000 people. For such a small village it has an astounding vibe and history.

Lake Placid hosted the winter Olympic games twice – in 1932 and again in 1980. Donna worked at 1980 games parking cars on Mount Van Hoevenburg. Another interesting factoid about the 1980 Olympic games – the Lake Placid Middle/High school was issued a liquor license and served as a bar during the games. It’s the only high school in the USA to be issued a liquor license!

We’re staying at the Lake Placid fire station RV park. The fire station is manned by three full time fire fighters and a volunteer crew. One of volunteers, Bob, runs the RV park (which is a New York state licensed RV park). The spaces are bit cramped but all of them have full hook ups with 50 amp service. We have the only pull through site so we didn’t have to drop our trailer. We also have a view of Mill Pond from our front door!

Getting into the fire station was an adventure. I turned on to Mill Pond Road, but I should have driven another 50 feet and pulled in to the fire station entrance. Once I committed to Mill Pond Road, I had no choice but to follow it into the village center. This involved a couple of narrow streets and tight turns. The Iron Man triathlon is being held here this weekend and the village was bustling with pre-race activities. We remained calm and made our way through it all and back to fire station without any drama.

The Iron Man triathlon has been held here every year since 1999. It’s the second oldest official Iron Man event in North America. We have a friend from Michigan, Allen Hutchinson, competing this weekend in the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bicycle and 26.2-mile run. The race takes place on Sunday but there have been athletes up here training for weeks. We’ll try to hook up with Allen and his wife, Crystal in the days ahead.

We had lunch in town at the Chair6 restaurant with our friends Alec and Susan Friedman. Susan is an author/speaker Donna met in a book club when she lived here back in 2000 – 2002. Alec is the rabbi at the synagogue here.

Donna’s sister, Pam and her husband Gene joined us later at the fire station. We grilled pork tenderloins and ate at the picnic table. Entertainment was provided by the fire crew. They were training for fire department competition. This was fun to watch and something new to me. Gene was a former volunteer fire fighter here and he explained the activity to us. The fire crews compete against other departments in various timed events. Some of the events involve a drag race type start with special race vehicles quickly accelerating to 60 mph with fire crewmen standing on a platform on the rear. The vehicle then skids to a stop as the crew jumps off, sets a ladder and one of them climbs a tower to complete the course. This type of competition is great training for the fire crew as the events they compete in simulate many of the firefighting skills they need.

We had a very full day and look forward to more fun-filled activities throughout the weekend.

View of Mill Pond from our doorstep

View of Mill Pond from our doorstep

Lunch served at Chair6

Lunch served at Chair6

Lake Placid FD pump truck

Lake Placid FD pump truck

LPFD competition truck

LPFD competition truck

LPFD Roush powered race car

LPFD Roush powered race car

Crew aboard race car

Crew aboard race car

Setting ladder amid tire smoke

Setting ladder amid tire smoke

Climbing up to the tower

Climbing up to the tower

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boondocking?

Is it “boondocking” when you spend the night in a parking lot? I think not. To me boondocking is a more remote experience, away from commercial conveniences. No hookups, no Starbucks. I prefer to call the overnight stays at the Walmart or Lowes parking lot “dry camping”. Hmmm…this raises the question of the definition of camping.

However you define or describe it, we had our second parking lot experience after driving to Watertown. The drive from Dunkirk was nice, we bypassed the NY Turnpike and choose back roads and US 20 through western New York state. The route was rolling hills and very rural. This is wine country and very scenic. We passed through the Finger Lake region where we hope to spend a couple of days on our way back  west.

We took a break at a truck stop and ran the generator for an hour.This allowed us to charge our laptops and tablets. Donna used the break time to shower and catch up on email while I searched for an overnight spot in Watertown.

The generator is not only making electricity; it’s also making an unusual odor. This has me concerned. The smell is similar to the odor of a bad fluorescent light fixture ballast. I’ll look into it once we’re settled in Lake Placid.

We drove to another Walmart. I made a pass though the parking lot. It was spacious but adjacent to a busy road, very open and not so level. While I was trying to figure out the best way to park our rig, Donna spotted a Lowes across the boulevard below the grade of the road. We drove over and found it to be more desirable for an overnight stay. We parked on the side of the building where it was level, quiet and we had a view of grass and woods again!

We went inside to seek permission for overnight parking. The manager told us it wasn’t allowed, but nobody would complain – wink,wink. After dinner at the Texas Roadhouse we returned to our coach and sat outside with an after dinner cocktail.

Then our fortune turned. The manager came over with one of the workers and told us we could stay but we couldn’t stay in the area we chose. The workers needed to access a container near our rig to load and unload goods during the night. Time to be flexible again.

We moved to a large open, level lot on the other side of the building near a Kmart. No view but it’s quiet and level and well, not a bad place to camp for the night. In the morning, we’ll fuel up and drive 130 miles through the mountains to Lake Placid.

Road Trip

I wonder how long this will feel like a road trip. I’ve always enjoyed road trips and get really excited about them. In fact I usually get impatient for the trip to begin and can hardly sleep. That’s how Tuesday (yesterday) began. I woke up at 4:15am and couldn’t sleep so I got up and wrote the day’s post. Donna got up at a more sensible 6:00am.

We made our final departure from the driveway at 8:00am. It was an emotional moment for Donna while I was feeling excitement and wanderlust. We pounded down I75 and I mean that literally – that road surface is awful. Weeks ago I had mapped out our route with the trip to Lake Placid broken up onto three roughly equal legs. Remember what I said about plans changing? We quickly learned that when we’re on the road, flexibility is the key word.

We made it to Cleveland around 2:00pm and decided it was too early to stop. A couple of hours later Donna was learning how to use some of the functions on the Rand-McNally RVND 7720 GPS.  This device is designed for RV use and she used it to direct us to RV friendly overnight parking. We ended up at a Walmart Super Center in Dunkirk, New York around 4:30. I think we drove about an hour longer than we should have. I was feeling road weary and Donna was a bit antsy from co-piloting all day. Driving a big rig isn’t the same as cruising in a modern car. it’s a bit more challenging and mentally taxing. Although I know a Walmart parking lot doesn’t sound like a good place to spend the night, we felt pretty good about it. We were at the end of the lot looking into a grassy area with a wooded creek. It was also quiet where we were.

There was another RV in the parking lot – a 40′ Newmar Dutch Star. It belonged to an older couple, Mason and Floretta from Oklahoma. They’re en route to Nova Scotia via Niagara Falls. Mason is a retired pilot. He flew business and charter aircraft all over the world. He gave us the tour of his coach and Floretta told tales of RVing to Alaska.

Donna whipped up a salad for dinner with roasted chicken from the Walmart Supercenter. I wanted to take a picture of the salad as I thought it was quite nice but Donna wouldn’t let me. Apparently the presentation wasn’t up to her standards. Next time I’ll have to make the photo request before she serves.

Tomorrow we’ll head up to Watertown before we call it a day. Then it’s on to Lake Placid. I’ll add pictures to the posts once we’re settled in at Lake Placid.