One way to avoid crowded trails on a weekend, and fulfill Gail's goal of swimming a 10K, was to head to Follensby Clear Pond before 6 am. She had registered to do a 10K in Vermont, but like much of life these days, it was canceled due to COVID. The location was excellent, we had the lake to ourselves for most of the morning. There are lots of campsites along the shores and on the islands, but people were just getting up. Small motor boats are permitted for fishing but we only saw a couple.
She sets her watch:
A few minutes into the swim a juvenile bald eagle flew over and then perched in this tree to watch the excitement.
We'd never seen and heard so many loons before. They were neither shy nor quiet.
Official open water swimming events have lots of stringent rules, unofficial swims have lots of opportunities to break those rules and no one can do anything about it.
No kissing the support.
No footwear or walking through shallow channels.
No wearing of unconventional head coverings.
No hanging onto the boat.
When all the rules had been broken, and she out-swam a dog that ran into the lake from a campsite and pursued her, she swam back to the boat launch area and checked her mileage: 6.25 miles or damn close to 10K. The swimmer's equivalent to running a marathon (which she did many times before hip surgeries).
Now if she could only master the inhaling part of underwater breathing.
The swim successfully completed, it was time for ice cream. Ice cream was also on the menu after paddling and hiking, even getting up in the morning on a good day.
We had a tip about the special ice cream at Donnelly's north of Saranac Lake, and we were going by just as it opened so what choice did we have?
It turned out there wasn't much choice, Donnelly's only has one flavor per day, so we got sundaes. Behind Gail in the photo above is Whiteface Mountain on the left and the McKenzie Chain of mountains west of Lake Placid. I made a half-hearted attempt to climb McKenzie once but didn't have enough time or water so didn't make it. Since Gail took less than half the day for her swim I figured I'd give it another shot that afternoon and biked to the Jack Rabbit Trail. I'd read part of it was closed but didn't consider it might be the part I wanted to hike. I'll get there someday. I did make it up Whiteface at the end of our week.
Back at our pad we rented for the week I wasn't to be deterred and went in search of the illusive trail to Seymour Cobble just down the road. It wasn't too hard to find, not a hard hike at all, and it offered excellent views of the high peaks and Scarface Mountain just to the west. Where were the crowds? I hung out admiring the views for almost two hours and no one else came along.
Seymour Cobble is just a little hill above an old dairy farm.
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