Burlington – Fort Ticonderoga – Lake Placid

There are Dunkin Donuts on every corner in the Northeast so we figured we need to check one out for breakfast. We walk in and there is a line with about 20 people. To give a quick overview the coffee is good, the donuts are adequate, nothing like a good hot Krispy Cream.

The drive to Fort Ticonderoga is nice, thru large farms with field of corn and mega barns. The road is along the lake and you can see it over the farms. We cross the lake by ferry and we timed it perfect. We drove on and they shut the gate behind us. We are behind a school bus. Why do kids always wave? I told Carole that this was a bad omen, those kids are going the same place we are. We get to follow the bus all the way to the Fort, which actually made finding it quite easy.

The history of the Fort is much more real when you see it that when you read about it in history books. Starting in 1759 the French and British, well that is probably much more detail than I need to go into. What was interesting is a family named Pell saved the Fort from destruction. It is probably relatives of the founding fathers of Pell City. If you are ever this far north it is worth a visit of course Carole and I love to tour old forts and read all the signs.

The GPS wanders us all thru the New York roads to get to Lake Placid. We made most of the trip on very narrow two lane county roads. That was not all bad because the scenery was great. We got into several nice patches of color. One section of the road had waterfalls along side and a canopy of colored leaves above.

As we are entering into Lake Placid there are these two towers we see in the distance. We debate what type of industrial operation is going on there. Looks a lot like the towers around coalmines. They are two concrete towers with what looks like conveyors running down from them but they look way to steep. Then we see the sign to the ski jumps. Those people have to be totally crazy to go up and ski off those things. I have seen a lot of Olympic ski jumps on TV but I had no idea of the magnitude of what they were jumping from. I have a whole new appreciation now.

The town of Lake Placid is neat. Beth you should have come here much nicer than Stowe. There are lots of little shops on the edge of the lake. There is one boat house that is unbelievable. I would guess there is some pricey real-estate in the area.

The hotel we are staying in would not meet Michael standards. Luckily it is only one night. For those of you who don’t know our measure of hotels has always been on the Michael Standard. When he was about 3 years old we stayed in a motel and it want to leave because it wasn’t nice enough. So from then on we have always based the quality of the hotel on the Michael Standard. May there is something about mountain hotels because the one he wanted to leave was in Gatlinburg.

Today we head south. We have about 9 hours of driving ahead of us. OK Carole stop snoring, get up and let’s get moving.