Social Distancing Warm-up

  Way back in March, before life went off the rails, I took a trip to the Adirondacks for some camping in the snow.  It was supposed to be a trip to Pharaoh Lake with the boys, but one of them had to cancel the night before and the other is a jerk who didn't want to spend the weekend alone with me. 
  I chose not to go to Pharaoh as it's pretty far and there wasn't much snow there at the time.  I considered taking all of Thursday off work to go to the high peaks, but that meant more driving so I opted for a shorter drive to the snowier region near Old Forge to Middle Settlement Lake in the Ha-De-Ron-Dah Wilderness.
  It was warm when I got there, almost 50, but there was plenty of snow and it was firm enough that I could walk on the trail without snowshoes.  I had no trouble getting to the lean-to before dark and prepared for a storm expected to blow in over night.  It arrived in the morning, strong winds, heavy rain mixed with snow.  I worried about being able to get back out where I had to cross the inlet if the water level rose too much, but after doing some improvements to the crossing after the rain stopped that wasn't a concern.  It stayed warm-ish Friday and Saturday and the wind never let up, but by Sunday morning it had dropped to 20 degrees.
  Had a fine hike Saturday, as long as I stayed on the frozen snowshoe tracks I didn't sink at all. I missed a turn and added a few miles, saw some interesting bugs in the water, tried to get a group photo on the boulder behind the lean-to and just had a nice, rare time of solitude.