Saranac Lakes 2025 - Part III

This is Part III of a trip diary which starts here.

Day 6: Thursday 9/11 

Wednesday night was the only night of the trip I had any trouble sleeping, so Thursday morning I was happy to stay in bed for a while reading and continuing to watch the Billy Joel documentary (which is interesting, but really long!). 

Jen, Béla, and I paddled the perimeter of Middle Saranac Lake, including poking down into the creek in the southwest corner of the lake to find Bartlett Carry, a portage trail which is the only way to connect between Middle and Upper Saranac lakes. We had done this portage in 2016 when we did a trip traversing the Saranac Lakes. In the process we managed to destroy one of our kayak carts and generally wear ourselves out. This time around we were smart enough to not even get out of our boats. I will say as an aside that this is my second trip in a row to the Saranacs where I never made it into Upper Saranac Lake, which is too bad - there's some beautiful paddling there, especially around Follensby Clear Pond and Fish Creek. Next time ...

Impressive beaver dam near Bartlett Carry. Beavers are very industrious

Lunch spot on Middle Saranac Lake

Lunch break 

Upon our return it was interesting to note that no camp craft had been accomplished - for example, no water had been filtered and no wood had been cut. Tall Tom is usually Mr. camp craft, as industrious as any beaver, and his lack of activity around camp was evidence that he was feeling a little under the weather this trip. But he roused himself for some amazing cooking later in the day! It was my turn to make dinner. In planning my dinner recipes for our trips, by my second meal I'm usually doing some backpacker-like recipe, which in this case was a dehydrated vegetarian coconut curry. However once again my appetizer (dehydrated hummus) and dessert (Halloween candy and weird dehydrated cookie dough bites from Walmart) left something to be desired. I was saved in the appetizer department when Tom dug various leftovers from previous nights out of the coolers - three types of cheese, hummus (not the dehydrated kind!) and crackers, etc. But the pièce de résistance was Tom's peach cobbler dessert, built around peach pie filling from Tom's friend Pam. I've never met Pam but based on the volume of her home canning output I picture her as some kind of holdover from 19th Century, perhaps attired in a hoop skirt. 

Anyway, the recipe involved spreading the peach pie filling along the bottom of a dutch oven (yes, another of our campsite luxuries this trip was a big cast iron dutch oven), covering it with layer of those instant bake-it-yourself biscuits from a tube, and then letting it bake in the campfire. Hot and bubbly out of the fire it was really good!

Peach cobbler dessert

Enjoying our peach cobbler

Post-cobbler chilling by the fire

By this point, despite our abundance, we were starting to feel the pinch of the end of our trip. We were out of ice, so our coolers were not really keeping things very cold anymore. The gauge on our cooking gas tank was starting to go down. We had burned through a bunch of the firewood. Clearly, the end of the trip was approaching.

Day 7: Friday 9/12 

About this time we started to think about cutting the trip a day short. Our plan had been for our usual seven nights of camping, but a variety of factors were leading us to consider trimming a night. I had a music world commitment I wanted to honor on Sunday. Back home, Béla's wife had suffered an injury. In addition there was a chance of rain in the forecast for Saturday, and I suspect Tall Tom was getting frustrated by his lack of ability to do much activity.

Typically eat every single day of the trip I eat a breakfast of grits with various mix-ins: protein powder, powdered milk, peanut powder, and/or trail mix. Our bagel breakfasts on this trip had already offered a break from this monotony. On Friday, our last full day in camp, I dug out the remainder of my granola (something I brought as a snack, not as a meal) and a box of shelf stable milk I had nabbed from the Best Western and had a bowl of granola and milk for breakfast. That may not seem like something worth writing about, but (a) I love breakfast cereal and these camping trips are among the rare occasions when I don't eat at least one bowl of cereal over the course of a day, and (b) I certainly never allow myself the sugary indulgence of granola. It was a treat! Oh, and I even used a disposable bowl so I didn't have any cleanup after breakfast (Béla washes all our dinner dishes in lieu of cooking, but we're each on our own for clean-up for our other meals).

Jen wanted a leisurely day in camp to read and sketch, so Béla and I set out to go back up into Lower Saranac Lake, this time exploring north into the lake itself rather than east into the ponds. I know, another day of "we kayaked, we ate lunch, we kayaked back." But every day has its unique treats, which on Friday included seeing a bear! Béla spotted it first as we were paddling back through the Saranac River. Sure enough, a black bear was watching us from the bank of the river, maybe sixty feet away. While bears are excellent swimmers, the land/water barrier provided at least psychological distance between us. I managed to get a picture before the bear turned and lumbered off into the tall grass. This was very, very cool and was in fact the best bear sighting I've ever had in the wild. I barely even saw bears in Alaska, save for the one I ran across walking the streets of downtown Juneau.

Bear!

Along the way we also saw the campsites of an apparently large group from the Hackensack River Canoe and Kayak Club, which each was marked with a large "HRCKC" banner. Given the context Béla and I figured out that the acronym probably stood for Something Something Canoe and Kayak Club, but didn't know what "HR" stood for until we Googled it later.

We also crossed paths several times with a fisherman in a powerboat whose dog was having a great time standing up in the bow, nose to the wind like a ship's figurehead. Very cute. The cool nights had caused the fall colors to start to pop, and the sun shining through the bright red of the maples would have made our trip back through the Saranac River spectacular even had we not seen the bear!

I must confess that while I love working the Saranac locks, in both directions the lock was in use by a powerboat so Béla and I simply carried our kayaks from one side of the lock to the other rather than waiting.

A fisherman's dog enjoying the day

Fall colors popping

Once we decided we were leaving on Saturday logistics dictated that it would make sense to bring one of the kayaks back on Friday, so I paddled back to South Creek and put my kayak back on my car. The motorboat followed and brought me back to camp.

Returning to South Creek

I feel like every year the writeup of this trip includes an explanation of some arcane aspect of Judaism. This year's topic concerns marking the anniversary of a loved one's death. Every year on the yahrtzeit, or anniversary of a close family member's death you light a candle and say a prayer known as kaddish. The catch is that kaddish is among the prayers which can only be said if there's a quorum of ten people, so the practice in at least Reform synagogues is to say kaddish for the week's yahrtzeits when people gather at Friday night services. This year the anniversary of my mother's passing fell within our trip week. My synagogue live streams services, and with our good connectivity I was able to remotely hear my mother's name mentioned and join in saying the kaddish prayer with the congregation. It was actually quite lovely to do this while watching the sun set over the lake. I did bring a yahrtzeit candle with me on the trip but opted not to light it - the things burn for 24 hours, which I figured might not be safe in camp. 

Yahrtzeit sunset

When I returned to the group I found another of Tom's cooking experiments well under way - skillet cornbread. I was still kind of full from Tom's yummy dinner of chicken, vegetables, and rice, but I can't resist cornbread. The bread was a little burned on the bottom, campfire style, but was quite tasty! Another of my luxuries was that I had brought along a few cans of caffeine-free Coke Zero. Given that it was our last night, I drank my final can. I must say that I had felt like a real goober bringing soda on a backcountry camping trip, but it turned out that Tom and Béla brought soda too.

Usually, when I call Valerie in the evening I wander off from camp into the woods to get some privacy, but having seen the bear not all that far from camp earlier in the day, I stayed a little closer to camp than usual. I am the subject of some teasing from the others because I bring a can of bear repellant spray (basically pepper spray in a can the size of a small fire extinguisher) with me on these trips, but I slept better that night knowing I had it nearby.

No bears in camp, but apparently a raccoon spent some time in my camp chair

Day 8: Saturday 9/13 

On Saturday we packed up our gear and, as is typical for this group, were ready to go 30 minutes ahead of our planned departure time. Let me say, we brought a lot of stuff! Enough to fill the motorboat pretty well. Thank goodness Jen had packed a bunch of her stuff into her kayak. Tom and I took the motorboat back to the marina. The others paddled back to South Creek where they loaded their kayaks and gear onto their cars and then met us at the marina. It had been Tom's idea to just meet back at the marina, and it worked well. When Jen and Béla arrived we had just finished unloading the gear, which we had stacked into four piles by owner (nonetheless, a few items wound up in the wrong cars).

Guiding the gear boat home

We said our goodbyes with a big hug, then each went our separate ways. It had been really good to spend some time with Jen, who we don't get to see very often since she moved away, and it was good for Tall Tom to get out on a little bit of an adventure.

I got on the road a bit later than the rest due to a pre-drive bathroom break. Well, that and because I made stop at a Stewart's to pick up a vanilla milkshake and a cup of coffee, as I have found that a combination of caffeine and sugar can keep me alert behind the wheel for many hours. Tom was still sharing his location from his phone so it was interesting to track that even though the two cars didn't communicate or coordinate our stops in any way, we remained about 20 minutes apart all the way to Delaware, where I stopped for dinner (a $15 tuna sandwich, which complemented the $7 Diet Coke I had purchased at an earlier gas stop - literal highway robbery) at the Joe Biden rest area before launching into the busy final stretch of roadway through the Baltimore to Washington region.

Lessons Learned 

There wasn't too much novel camp craft on this trip. I will say that I bring way too much food. I'm always nervous about running out of food, so I bring a zillion energy bars, bags of snacks, etc. On this trip matters were made worse because I packed for a typical trip, then added extra fresh food because we could. For example, I packed eight breakfasts, then in addition I bought bagels which served for two breakfasts, plus since I had a cooler at the last minute I bought a couple of yogurts which served as breakfast for another couple of days. Likewise, I had packed assuming our traditional high caloric consumption of full days of paddling. Still, I always bring too much food. 

I had all this food left over at the end of the trip

Since Rob wasn't part of the trip (we missed him!) I did pick up a few items to cover for some of the things he usually brings. His bag of tricks in his bottomless boat includes all kinds of fasteners and lights. I picked up a bag of small spring clips, which served well for hanging stuff on the clothes line as well as holding our picnic table tablecloth in place, and the cool multicolor LED light string which can be seen in the shelter photos. And in preparing for the trip I discovered that it's possible to buy First Aid kit replenishment packs. I'm sure it's cheaper to just grab Tylenol, Immodium, etc. from whatever supply one has at home, but given the damp nature of kayak trips I preferred to have meds in the sealed little single-serving packets you find in first aid kits, since I think they keep better than way.

Another one for the books. Where to next year?!

 

Saranac Lakes 2025 - Part II

This is Part II of a trip diary which starts here.

Day 3: Monday 9/7 

I'm an early riser, so on our first day in camp I got out of my tent at about 6:30AM to face a cold, cold early Monday morning. We didn't have any plans to get anywhere in a rush that morning and everyone else had the sense to stay in bed until the temps warmed up. They may have avoided the numb fingers and toes I experienced, but they missed out on a beautiful scene of early morning mist over the water, as the cold air condensed over the relatively warm water of the lake. 

Morning mist

Mid-morning Tom and I took the motorboat back to South Creek to retrieve the things which had been left behind in the previous day's chaos, including my cooler, my Jackery power system and giant solar panel (which we really didn't need, but which I had recently gotten for a steal at a community sale and wanted a chance to play with), and our Yonkers bagels. When we got back to camp the four of us had a fancy brunch of bagels (toasted over Tom's old school stove-top toaster), cream cheese and lox. 

Campsite bagel brunch

Tom was still feeling less Tall than usual, so in the afternoon he stayed in camp while the remaining three of us went out in our kayaks to explore across the lake and up into Weller Pond. We paddled about 6 miles round-trip, including a snack stop at the lovely if unpleasantly named Tick Island (poor branding!). Not a lot of miles for a full day of kayaking, but a good easy start to the trip after the previous day's cockup (to use a British term).

My dinner of chicken vegetable stew, which I had pre-cooked and frozen in containers at home, was well received, though the accompanying gummy bear dessert was met with less enthusiasm. This was despite the fact that they were organic gummy bears from Whole Foods which according to the package were "inspired by real fruit flavors". Maybe they would have been better received if they had been that other kind of gummy - wink, wink. Traditionally we're all exhausted at night from the day's paddling, but this was an easy day so we hung out fairly late (which means after 9 PM) in the shelter and enjoyed a campfire before all crawling into our tents.

Hanging out in the shelter

So, let me tell you a little about our campsite accommodations. One of the tricks of camping is to create an environment that's right for your trip. At one end of the spectrum you see car campers who bring so much stuff you wonder why they even left home, and at the other you see ultralight backpackers who live on ramen drained through their socks so they don't have to carry the extra weight of a strainer (my understanding is that by about the third day of the trip sock-strained ramen starts to taste pretty funny). We generally aim in between those extremes: more luxury than a backpacker, since we can carry more, without going overboard, so to speak.

I had mistakenly remembered that this campsite had only a "thunderbox", that is, an outhouse without the house part, but in fact it had a full outhouse, which a previous occupant had even left stocked with toiled paper and hand sanitizer. Humorously, someone had also added a gel seat pad to the toilet seat. More luxury!

Quite commodious

Tall Tom always brings the latest iteration of his portable battery-powered shower. Here's how it works: fill the black bucket half-way with lake water. Boil some water on the stove in the grey pot and then dash through the woods with it and add it to the black bucket, resulting in a good amount of reasonably warm water. While the water is still warm, get undressed and have a lovely shower dans le nature.

Campsite shower

This trip was definitely about abundance compared with our typical kayak-based camping lifestyle. Tom had brought a big ol' tank of cooking gas, so we had plenty of fuel for cooking as well as heating water for showers. I brought a fold-up egg crate camping mat to place on top of my usual backpacker camping cot and brought my big, big tent. I also brought three pillows (two small camping pillows plus an inflatable) so I didn't have to use my clothing dry bag as a pillow, plus I brought a sleeping bag liner for extra warmth. With the Jackery power system we never had to worry about running out of battery power (I usually am very mindful about preserving power, keeping my headlamp on low, my phone on airplane mode, and so on). I already mentioned the big pile of firewood we found on our arrival, so we had plenty of wood. I carted in a full five gallon jug of water, so we didn't immediately have to start focusing on filtering drinking water. And speaking of phones, we had solid cellphone connectivity, which I consider a mixed blessing. Years back, backcountry phone connectivity was very iffy - maybe you could find a particular spot around the campsite where if you were lucky you could get voice or maybe texting connectivity. Or maybe you'd have to keep toggling in and out of airplane mode until finally the phone caught a whiff of signal and connected. Of course, before that there was a time when there was no such thing as cell phone connectivity. This time around, we had solid LTE coverage all the time. That's good in that we were able to stay abundantly connected with home and get updated weather forecasts, but bad in that we never really fully disconnected from the outside world.

Big ol' solar charging station in action

Let me also talk about bear hangs. Perhaps the first lesson in backcountry camping is that at night you always suspend your food and other scented items from a tree to keep from attracting bears and other wildlife. On our previous trip to this campsite I had diligently gone through the hassle of doing a bear hang every night, while Tall Tom and Rob just stored their food in the shelter (in bear resistant bags, at least). I started once again to do a bear hang on this trip, but quickly figured that my storing my food away from the campsite wasn't going to make much difference in whether we attracted wildlife given that the other three group members were storing their food bags in the shelter. So, I gave up on my bear hang after one night and just stored my food (also in bear-resistant bags) in the shelter like everyone else. We were fine. We got a small amount of interest from mice and raccoons, but as far as I can tell bears never entered our campsite (though they were close by - more on this later).

Day 4: Tuesday 9/8

Once again I got out of my tent early and spent some chilly time walking around the campsite checking out the views. The morning was even colder than the day before, so I got a small fire going and put up water for coffee. Critters of some kind had gotten into our trash bag; I cleaned up the mess and put everything into a new bag, which we hung in a better spot. As each person woke up they gravitated towards the campfire, and hanging out by the fire on a chilly morning was so pleasant that we wound up again getting a slow start on our day's activities. Mid-morning Béla, Jen and I finally roused ourselves and set off to explore into Lower Saranac Lake. This involved retracing the path through the twisty Saranac River which Tall Tom and I had traversed in the motorboat a few days earlier - this time with less stress since the river was largely deserted and we were in kayaks. This path took us through the lock between Middle and Lower Saranac Lakes lakes. I am the expert lock operator of the group; on this trip I worked it in one direction and supervised while my lock-operating apprentice Jen worked it in the other.

Jen and Béla in the lock

We decided to go through the ponds towards Lake Flower and scout the large boat ramp at the park headquarters, since we were looking for better places to unload at the end of the trip rather than hauling our gear up the trail at South Creek. This boat launch looked like a good option - though later on Tom came up with an even better idea. 

Paddling through the lake's islands

The shorelines in some parts of the Saranac Lakes are quite rocky and steep with little opportunity to land kayaks, particularly if one of your party has a brand new (to him) kayak which he doesn't want to scratch up by landing on rocks. With a little exploration we eventually found a hospitable spot to land for lunch near campsite 26 on Pope Island. Our total paddling for the day was about 11.5 miles.

Back at camp, Tom made a tasty dinner of chicken sausage and peppers. I skipped the mint Milano cookies he provided for dessert not because I'm virtuous, but because they are dairy and I had just eaten meat (Jewish dietary rules stuff). 

Earlier I detailed my luxurious bedding arrangement on this trip: mini cot, egg crate mattress pad, three (tiny camping) pillows, a down sleeping bag and liner. Let me tell you, it's a very cozy arrangement once one is situated, but every night the process of getting myself into the sleeping bag liner and the sleeping bag, arranging the pillows, zipping myself into the sleeping bag, and arranging the bag's hood over my head all without totally knocking the mattress pad out of place was an acrobatic feat which usually took several tries. I think I probably made a lot of noise getting settled into bed at night. Maybe that's why Jen packed up her tent and moved it farther away from mine after night one. I will say, though, that once I got everything positioned right via my nightly contortionist act, I slept quite well almost every night including being comfortably warm despite the cold temperatures. 

Sunset at Camp

Another campsite photo

Day 5: Wednesday 9/9

It's amazing how quiet the Adirondacks are. In early September in the DC area the night air is still abuzz with cicadas, and you hear songbirds all day long. Up in the north country, on the other hand, I guess September is much further along towards winter. The birds and insects are mostly gone, except for the loons with their haunting calls. We didn't even see many small critters, other than the cute tiny little Adirondack red squirrels. The only time we heard noise was when we got the occasional aircraft overflight which Jen said was from the nearby Fort Drum.

"Birdlife" from Fort Drum

By Wednesday I had finally learned my lesson: while I still woke up early, I stayed in my tent reading the newspaper and watching some more of the Billy Joel documentary on my phone until around 8 AM, by which time the temp had crossed up into the 40's. Once we were all awake we ate the remaining bagels with butter, cream cheese and Tom's friend Pam's peach butter. I've never met Pam, but she provides lots of provisions for our trips in the form of things like the green beans she "puts up" each year and gives to Tom as a gift. 

Instead of kayaking, we went for a hike. The Adirondacks contain a series of lakes, and one of the things people historically do is paddle a lake, then portage, or carry, their boat and stuff over to the next lake. In my opinion, portaging isn't all that much fun, but the portage trails between lakes are in some cases worthy hikes in and of themselves. We had heard that the canoe carry trail from Weller Pond to Saginaw Bay was such a nice hike, including a section of old growth woods, and we decided to check it out. The four of us piled into the motorboat and made quick work of the trip across Middle Saranac Lake and up into Weller Pond - the very same route which had explored by kayak on Monday.

Heading to Weller Pond (Jen says driving a boat is like driving a tractor)

The hike was, in fact, quite pretty, and there was one section of the woods where the nature of the trees changed - fewer scraggly understory trees, more big, mature trees. Given the harsh environment of the ADKs this was not lush California old growth forest, but we think we found the rare spot which had never been logged. When we got to the Saginaw Bay end of the trail we came across two old guys (even by our standards) who had kayaked over and were doing the same walk in the opposite direction. Not surprisingly, we saw them again on the way back.

Hike photos

It was a fun hike, but it was a workout for Tall Tom, who as I've mentioned, is not up to his usual tallness. When we got back to camp he relaxed while the rest of us showered. I've got to say, a warm shower, even with lake water (actually, the lake water is pretty clean) is a life restoring experience. I don't know what it is about kayak camping, maybe it's the time spent in wet neoprene clothing, but after a few days you start to smell really bad. In my case I pick up an odor which is something like rancid Cheez Doodles mixed with goat droppings, and it's good to wash it off every once in a while. I also shaved both my face and head, making me the only trip participant to freshen their hairdo during the trip.

Freshly showered

After my shower I put on fresh, clean clothes, which is a luxury when backcountry camping. Except that I had packed for slightly warmer temperatures than we wound up having, so a couple of the warm layers I had brought just in case - a merino wool base layer and my scratchy old wool sweater - got worn for the whole week. Hey, supposedly you can wear wool for a long time before it gets stinky. 

It was Jen's turn to make dinner, which was salmon croquettes with rice pilaf, with a topping of cooked beets and carrots. Dessert was no-bake cookies ("doo doo cookies", according to Tom) which never quite solidified but which were yummy nonetheless. As further proof of how lazy the local wildlife is, Jen accidentally left the leftover salmon out overnight on the picnic table, and in the morning it was untouched.

Another pretty sunset

 

Saranac Lakes 2025 - Part I

Day 0: Friday 9/5

Some of our kayak trips are ADVENTURES, while others are more like fun hangs in the woods with friends. Last year’s trip to the Apostle Islands was definitely in the adventure category, with rough conditions and long daily paddles between islands. This year’s trip to the Saranac Lakes was more in the hangout category. Which is not to say it was unpleasant or disappointing - a hangout with old friends is a perfectly fine way to spend some time. And we had reasons! We intentionally planned a mellow trip because both Rob and Tall Tom have been having health issues which they knew would limit their paddling.

Let me give you an idea of the laidbackedness level of this trip. On previous trips I’d wake up before dawn and immediately begin packing things in my tent because we needed to have the kayaks packed and ready to hit the water at zero dark thirty, if not earlier. On this trip we all generally lounged in our sleeping backs for hours, waiting out the chilly mornings (morning temps in the 30's!), and on the last day I had to negotiate to get people to agree to leave before 11 AM (to the group’s credit, we wound up beating our agreed upon 10:30 AM departure time by half an hour).

But the trip always starts with the journey to get there, so let me start there. Since Rob’s health concerns caused him to drop out, this year’s trip wound up being just four of us: Tall Tom, Béla, Jen and me. Jen lives in upstate NY, which left three of us driving up from the DC area. I didn’t want to ride up together with the three of us, three kayaks, and all of our gear in one car, and Béla always likes to carpool with someone, so I volunteered that he and Tom should drive together while I drove up by myself. 

Also, I had an ulterior motive. For quite a while now I’ve been on the lookout for a lighter weight kayak. Back last year I almost bought one of Joey Schott’s ultralight Petrel kayaks, but I just never got comfortable with the idea of buying some garage kayak builder’s bespoke kayak - plus, I found the Petrel uncomfortable when I test paddled it. More recently I’d become interested in kayaks from a company called Stellar, and I’d noticed someone up in Yonkers, NY selling a Stellar for a very nice price. I made arrangements to take a look at the boat on my way upstate, and I wound up buying it! Also, since I was in the New York City area, I picked up some bagels for our group. Tom and I had discussed this idea before the trip. He left the bagel buying to me, probably a defensive move to avoid giving me an opening to complain about the poor quality of the bagels he (or anyone else) had brought.

Both the Béla/Tall Tom team and I had decided to split the 9+ hour drive up into two days, though we took different routes. I knew I'd be on my own Friday night and my idea was to overnight in some cool Hudson River Valley town. My initial thought had been Woodstock, but it’s ten miles out of the way, so instead I stopped in Saugerties, which sits right off the Thruway. If last year’s stop in Escanaba, MI gave us a window into the hollowing out of small town America, Saugerties is an example of how big NYC money can turn small towns into hipster playgrounds. The Hudson River Valley region has long been a convenient getaway from New York City, a trend which was turbocharged by flight from the city to the outlands during the pandemic. I pulled into town on a Friday evening, and the place was hopping. While Escanaba had a total of two rundown restaurants (actually, I seem to remember that dinner in Escanaba wound up being surprisingly tasty!), in Saugerties I had so many to choose from that I could barely make up my mind - organic bowls! Pizza! American! BBQ! Locavore this and locavore that! I strolled the streets (decorated with painted dog statues which were apparently up for auction as some kind of fundraiser) past the bookstore, poked my head into the free concert in an old barn, admired the well scrubbed vintage buildings, and finally chose to eat at a small, hip restaurant with a guitarist playing. 

The town of Saugerties

Dinner spot

While I ate I thumbed through my phone, looking for places to stay. Unfortunately, all my available choices seemed to fit into one of two categories: low-end chain motels just off the highway which had really terrible reviews, or very expensive B&B's. I was eating the bar and told the bartender of my predicament. He confirmed that the local chain motels were awful (his sister had stayed at them while her house was being rebuilt after a fire) and suggested I go to Kingston instead. Problem was, Kingston was twenty minutes back towards where I had come from. Heading north, the next place with a decent selection of hotels was 45 minutes away in Albany. Fortunately it was only 7 PM, and even though after an Impossible Burger and a beer I was really looking to settle in for the night, I instead got in the car and drove to Albany. I had blindly entered "Hampton Inn, Albany" into my GPS, which took me to a downtown hotel where their parking garage couldn't accommodate my car with kayaks on the roof (kayaks plural because I had brought one from home just in case my Yonkers kayak purchase hadn't gone through). The woman at the front desk suggested their more suburban property nearby in East Greenbush. So, I got back into the car yet again, but for only a ten minute drive. The hotel in East Greenbush was lovely - newly renovated, and they even upgraded me to a suite. I had a perfect night's sleep.

Day 1: Saturday 9/5

In the morning I availed myself of the hotel breakfast, including of course the Belgian waffle, then took the new kayak off the car to make some adjustments: I moved the seat forward a notch and transferred over my painter line and paddle park thingy from the other kayak. We were going to be "glamping" with the ability to bring coolers, so I stopped at a nearby Target for some fresh food: yogurt, carrots, etc. On the way out of the Target parking lot one of my hood loops (loops of webbing attached under the hood of the car which give you a place to secure a bow line from the kayak) failed with a loud pop - the webbing just tore right through - requiring me to stop and do a field repair, which fortunately held together for the rest of the trip. Other than that, the drive to Lake Placid, the groups' meeting place, was uneventful, if rainy.

By the time I got into Lake Placid it was raining fairly hard. I browsed the stores in town for a while, getting fairly soaked in the process. Eventually I ducked into a restaurant and had a lunch consisting of combo of minestrone soup and a turkey sandwich. Coming from the sticky summertime weather of the mid-Atlantic, it was novel to feel chilly and appreciate a warm bowl of soup. After lunch I checked into my hotel. The Best Western wasn't as up to date as the previous night's hotel, but in addition to old school rustic charm, the staff was really friendly. Given that it was cold and rainy, I switched the HVAC from air conditioning to heat, which immediately filled the room with that burnt smell you get when you turn on a heater for the first time in a long time and it burns out whatever junk has accumulated in the system. After blow-drying my shoes and socks (I was wet!) I took a short nap, during which time the storm system blew out of town. When I went to meet Tom and Béla for dinner the rain was gone, replaced by cool, clear air. At dinner I was excited to order trout, a dish I've associated with upstate New York since my days eating at Rudi's Big Indian restaurant in the 80's. As an aside, Rudi's was a somewhat upscale restaurant somehow associated with an ashram in the town of Big Indian in Ulster County, NY.

Meeting a new friend in Lake Placid

Day 2: Sunday 9/6

We had planned our trip to accommodate a couple in the group whose batteries weren't charged to 100% - knowing that they might not be able to paddle much and allowing for quick emergency medical extraction if needed. When faced with planning a trip for participants with health limitations we had originally considered a cabin-based trip rather than camping, but Tall Tom came up with the creative idea of still backcountry camping but renting a motorboat to get us in and out of the campsite rather than strictly depending on human power. This turned out to be a good idea, since it gave us all the opportunity to enjoy the camping part of the experience as well as the paddling; however, it added some complexity, some of which we had planned for and some of which took us by surprise.

The very nice marina boy gives us a boat tutorial

I'm on a boat!

Our plan for getting to our campsite was that Tom and I would pick up the motorboat and motor to the South Creek car-top launch where the whole group would load our gear from our cars into the motorboat (no cramming gear into the kayaks, which is a significant exertion in itself, and no paddling fully loaded boats!). Tom would then take the motorboat to our campsite, while the rest of us paddled our kayaks there. We would come back later for Tom's kayak.

Our challenges started with getting to South Creek. The trip was about 8 miles, a good portion of which was through the narrow Saranac River where we'd be limited to 5 MPH, plus we'd have to traverse a lock between two lakes. So, best case the trip would be an hour to an hour and a half - something I don't think we fully accounted for in our planning. Also, while we knew in advance that we would be on the lake about the same weekend as the Adirondack Canoe Classic, a 90 mile multiday race open to all kinds of paddle craft: canoes, kayaks, guide boats, etc., what we hadn't expected was that we would hit the narrow Saranac River just as the entire 90 Miler race was coming through in the opposite direction. So there I was, a novice motorboat operator trying to navigate a twisty, narrow, shallow river that was swarmed with all manner of canoes and kayaks going the other way. The presence of the racers slowed our progress to a crawl. The racers were friendly but did not make our lives any easier, cutting in front of us willy-nilly through turns as they were intent on making the best time possible. I'm happy to report that I made it through without hitting anyone. I did have to throw the boat into reverse a couple of times as an emergency maneuver when racers cut right in front of us, I hit one rock with the propeller (even though I was in the channel!), and we did get stuck once, but eventually we made it through. When we finally made it into Middle Saranac Lake we first had to hunt around for a bit to find the entrance to South Creek. Both Tom and I knew approximately where it was, but neither of us knew exactly which of the area's many little coves to find it it in. The whole journey wound up taking us something like two hours. Also, a cold rain started falling about the time we hit Middle Saranac Lake, making us pretty uncomfortable. I was shivering by the time we got to South Creek and had to sit in my car and warm up for a while. Fortunately, the rain passed quickly and didn't return for the duration of our trip.

Jen had scouted the South Creek launch a few weeks before our trip and had reported that the water level was pretty low due to a summer-long drought, but it hadn't registered with us that as a result we might have trouble getting the motorboat all the way up the creek to the car-top launch. Sure enough, when Tom and I finally made it to South Creek we ran out of depth a few hundred feet short of the dock. Jen did an impressive job of towing the motorboat with her kayak through a section where the motorboat was still afloat but where it was too shallow for us to use the engine. Unfortunately, even with our kayak tug we ran out of depth before we reached the dock and instead had to land the motorboat alongside the bank just short of a road bridge over the creek - the launch was just on the other side the bridge. From where we landed it was about a quarter of a mile walk to the cars, walking through the woods to the road, crossing the road, then walking down the road on the other side to the driveway which led into the car-top launch. Not exactly ideal for loading gear.

Tom clears the prop one of the many times we fouled it with weeds in shallow water.

Jen tries towing the motorboat - South Creek launch is just past the bridge

At this point the real snafu began. The pre-agreed plan had been to load all of our gear onto the motorboat at the dock at South Creek, then paddle our (not loaded) kayaks to the campsite. Of course, not being able get the motorboat all the way to the dock threw a monkey wrench into that plan. Because we weren’t going to be needing to fit everything into our kayaks, we had all brought luxuries beyond what would fit in our kayaks and hadn’t packed everything the way you would if you expected to have to squeeze it all into kayak hatches. Also, South Creek has a fairly small parking lot, and the spots were filling up. Consequently, what Jen, Béla and I decided was that Béla and I would take turns temporarily moving our cars to up the road to where we would have a shorter walk to where we had beached the motorboat. While one car and driver were out loading gear, the remaining two people would stay in the parking lot and try and guard the parking space so we didn’t lose it (Tom, of course, was staying with the motorboat). Béla took his car up to the loading spot first (he and Jen had already consolidated their gear into one car during the hours they had waited for us to show up in the motor boat). When Béla got back, I took my car over to the loading point but when I brought my first batch of gear down, the motorboat was gone! For whatever reason, Tom had decided to take off with just Béla and Jen's gear. We had no idea where he had gone and whether he was planning to come back, which left me with a little bit of a dilemma: I could wait in the parking lot for some indefinite period on the chance that Tom was going to come back, I could hit the water with Béla and Jen and paddle to the campsite with hopes of coming back later with the motorboat to retrieve my gear, or I could cram as much of my stuff as possible into my kayak and the three of us could head for the campsite with my stuff. This last option had a few challenges - I had brought a big tent that wasn’t going to fit into a kayak, I hadn’t packed my gear with the idea of needing to put it into a kayak, and I was paddling a brand new kayak that I had never paddled in let alone packed and paddled fully loaded. Nonetheless, it seemed like the only way to ensure that my essential gear and I would make it to the campsite.

So, Béla and Jen wound up waiting around for another 40 minutes or so while I frantically scrambled sort out what among my gear was essential and packable and would fit into my kayak. Fortunately, a lot of my camping gear lives in little dry bags which are amenable to being packed into a kayak and Jen was good enough help me out by strapping my big tent onto the deck of her kayak (Jen has a history of carrying my camping gear). Béla's hatches were already filled with our emergency supply of Adirondack air, so there was no room in them for any of my gear.

With my gear haphazardly crammed into the kayak, the three of us headed out and as we hit the mouth of the creek, there was Tom approaching in the motorboat! He proceeded to give us a hard time for being missing in action for so long and for not having had our radios on to communicate (there is no cell service at the South Creek launch, but Marine VHF radio could possibly have worked). At this point I admit I blew a fuse. I turned my kayak around and told them I'd had enough of the chaos and was going to head home and that the three of them should have a nice week; however, I cooled down by the time I was halfway back up the creek and so I once again turned around and rejoined the group. The good news is that I got some good practice turning my new kayak which, at nearly eighteen feet long isn't particularly easy to turn!

Things settled down after that. Campsites this time of year are first-come, first-served, and we got the exact site we wanted - a sweet spot where we've camped before which has a nice beach to land our varied fleet as well as the luxury of a lean-to shelter. As an aside, when I mentioned our site numbers in my blog entry after my very first trip to the Adirondacks one of my fellow travelers excoriated me for having revealed such valuable information. Apparently, similar to Fight Club, the first rule of Adirondack camping sites is you don't reveal your Adirondack camping sites. I wound up compromising by changing the blog such that the site numbers were expressed as a third order polynomial, an approach which would obscure the site numbers from casual blog readers but I guess still allow those with sufficient math skills to find the roots of the equation to figure it out. So I was amused on this trip when at the parking lot Tom told a number of people we encountered that we were aiming for campsite 63. Doesn't he know such information is highly classified?

Campsite 63 was not only available, it had been stocked with a big load of firewood, meaning we wouldn't have to spend our time foraging in the woods for sticks. It also meant that we really didn't need to have brought a chainsaw (I told you we brought luxuries!).

Yes, we had a chainsaw at camp

We quickly made camp, including Tom taping off a special area in the lean-to as being reserved for my chair, a funny move in response to my complaining about how in our last stay this campsite he and Rob had monopolized the shelter, leaving me no room even for my chair. Jen made a tasty dinner of polenta with spinach, goat cheese, almonds, and cranberries, and after a rather chaotic day we all turned in somewhat early.

Our fleet finds a home at last

Our campsite

The story of our Saranac trip continues here.