There's just no keeping me at home anymore. As soon as I have any money or leisure, I take off somewhere, which is just as irresponsible as it sounds. I spent this past week in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.
Maybe it's my roots in the tragically flat Midwest, maybe something deeper, but I've always been drawn to mountains. They're intoxicating for me -- wild, exotic, overwhelmingly beautiful.
After a week of residency, I now consider myself an Adirondack expert. Here are some useful things to do if you're headed this way:
1) Go to Lake Placid. For starters, Lake Placid is one of very few cities in the world that have hosted the Olympic Games more than once -- 1932 and 1980. The 1932 games were only the third time the modern games had been held and the first time they were held in the US. The 1980 games were, of course, the site of that famously "miraculous" hockey game.
Just outside of Lake Placid lies Whiteface Mountain, the fifth highest peak in the Adirondacks and the highest that is accessible by car. Go. It's fantastic. And don't take the elevator to the top, you pansy. climb. My mom did it; you can do it too.
2) Go white-water rafting down the Hudson. Be extremely careful if you're going in the early spring -- they open the river the first of April -- because the standing waves can be up to twenty-five feet high. For you metric system readers, that's, um... well, it's really high.
Our go wasn't quite that intense, but it was pretty fun. We had one especially exciting moment when we nearly capsized going over a rapid -- my aunt went overboard and we had to haul her back in by her life jacket. At another point, the boat behind us got hung up on a boulder. Our guide ordered us over to the bank so we could wait and make sure they got free. When we got to the edge of the river, he yelled that one of us had to hop out and hang on to keep us from rushing further downstream. When it became apparent that the three grown men on board had checked their balls at the front desk with their car keys, I jumped out, crawled up on a rock, and held the raft. Once the other raft was on their way, I lept, with the dexterity of a gazelle, back into my place and we were off again. Quite an thrill, I must say.
One note of caution: If you do go, bring your balls with you so that the little girl behind you doesn't write sh*t about you and publish it on the internet.
3) See a moose. I haven't managed this, even though I researched the best times & places to see them and how to make moose calls (which I'm getting pretty good at). Try coming in the fall. That's what I'll do next time.
If this sign were being honest, it would say "No moose for the next three months."
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