Vacationing in times of a pandemic is a tricky ordeal, but after sticking almost exclusively to Tompkins County since March, Gail and I were ready to venture to the Adirondacks. The reports from there sounded as bad as we've been seeing in Ithaca: hordes of people doing outdoor activities, many of them for the first time and completely out of their element. Nothing wrong with that, but we weren't looking for a crowd or finding lots of trash left by people who have never heard of the Leave No Trace Principles. There were lots of stories in Adirondack publications about the impacts of the crowds, and a really poignant one by a summit steward.
I'd been hiking at least a few hours a day, sometimes with a decent bike ride added in, and Gail has been swimming in the lake several times a week since the pools closed down. I was looking forward to a few challenging hikes in the mountains, and she had a notion to do her longest swim ever.
With lots of planning and flexibility, and our willingness to get up at 4:30 am on occasion, we avoided the crowds for the most part and had another amazing trip together. We figured traveling on Saturdays would be the best bet, so we drove up on a Saturday and stopped in Piseco to visit and have lunch with our good friends, Ann and Chips. Always good to see them but hard to limit the visit to a couple hours. We drove home the next Saturday and replayed the visit and lunch with friends we typically would stay with, Mary Ann and Glenn, at their house on Lake George. Special thanks to our friend, David, for loaning us his kayak so we could paddle together, a real treat.
In between the Saturdays it was a mighty fine time. Check it out:
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