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 Tall Tom and Rob - 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 sticking with 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.

Saranacs Addenda

This is additional information related to my Saranacs trip report, published in two installments: Part I and Part II.

A few additional thoughts:

• The era of handheld Garmin GPS receivers seems to be over. Before the trip I got out my Garmin and not only did it seem like very antique technology with a tiny little screen and a poky user interface, it wouldn't even reliably turn on anymore! Newer models with larger screens cost hundreds of dollars. Because I'm leery of keeping my phone on deck, I decided to try using my old iPhone as a GPS. I found and app called Avenza maps which will display a georeferenced PDF map. It also allow me to add my own waypoint files, so I can mark up the map with waypoints for features such as campsites and launch locations. With all of this stored on the unit, no cellular connection is required. It worked great - for three minutes. It turns out that my old phone is set to automatically lock after three minutes, and for whatever reason there's no way to disable it from doing so. On another day I tried it again, making sure to touch the screen once every 3 minutes to keep it awake. The worked well for a while - until I slipped up and let more than 3 minutes elapse. Also, it was hard to view the phone's screen through the waterproof case. I haven't given up on this idea, but it needs work.
• I am proud that both of my dinners were from scratch: no boil-in-bag pouches or spice packs, so they were low sodium and low fat while still tasting good. This is the quinoa chili recipe I used, and here's the Moroccan chicken.
• Other cooking stuff:
• Rob's powdered cheese was Hoosier Hill Farm brand
• Tom had some sort of single serving tomato sauce and meatballs pouches
• As usual I consumed exactly zero ibuprofen over the course of the trip. On middle-ager trips (if indeed we can still even be called middle-aged), Advil pills get consumed like so many Tic Tacs; however, I am weirdly non-achy for someone my age. I'm not complaining.
• I didn't really try any new camping hacks on this trip - though Tom says if I launder the Tyvek sheet I use on the floor of my tent in the washer it'll come out less crinkly - I'll have to try that

Saranacs Paddling Trip Part II: Lower Saranac

This is Part II of a trip Report. Part I can be found here.

Thursday

Dear reader, are you confused because Part I of this trip report referenced so many different lakes? Upper Saranac, Lower Saranac, Middle Saranac, Sidewise Left-Handed Saranac? Well just to warn you, this entry mentions several additional lakes, two ponds, and a river. Here's a very simplified diagram of the layout of the Saranac chain of lakes (some additional lakes and ponds in the chain are not shown, since they didn't play into our route):

Fig. 1: The Saranac Lakes for Dummies

To recap, we started our trip at the South Creek Launch at the bottom of Middle Saranac Lake and spent a few days on that lake. At this point in the trip we are heading through the Saranac River into Lower Saranac Lake.

Paddling the lakes

Repositioning days are tough: you have to break camp, pack the kayaks, paddle a loaded kayak to a new destination, and then unpack the kayaks and make camp again. Sometimes, as in this trip, you also have to spend some time hunting around for a campsite. On such days I start packing as soon as I wake up: get out of bed and pack up the sleeping bag and pillow (BTW, I like my new inflatable pillow!), get dressed then pack up the rest of my clothes, and so on. Even with such a focused approach it somehow takes hours to get ready to go. Tom is always the fastest to pack; Rob, who has to pack up his smoothie machine, digital home theater system, and portable Pilates reformer (OK, I am making all of that up, but I would not be surprised to see any of those things appear out of Rob's kayak), usually takes a little longer than I do - but one nice thing about our small group is that the three of us were pretty nimble and almost always beat our target launch time. In this case we launched at 10:15, fifteen minutes ahead of our target time. Our boats were chock full once again, since during our previous day's trip back to the cars we had swapped clothes and resupplied with food - supplies for the second half of the trip we had staged in the cars at the outset.

I was happy to say goodbye to the dozens of daddy-longlegs which were constantly swarming my kayak - but only mine! I guess they like mango color 

Our Middle Saranac campsite was right near the entrance to the Saranac River connection to Lower Saranac Lake (see Fig. 1), and so upon launching we were almost immediately into narrow river paddling. The river is used by both paddlers and motorboats, and while it wasn't very busy, every once in a while we'd have to make way for a powerboat. One of the distinctive features of the Saranac chain of lakes is that there are small locks in a couple of places which make it possible to navigate between lakes (the natural connections between the lakes are small rapids, which would be impassible for larger boats and would have meant portages for us). Sometimes the locks are staffed, and sometimes you get to operate them yourself. On this trip the Upper Lock (continuing the confusing naming scheme, the Upper Lock connects the Middle to the Lower lakes) was unattended, which meant that I got to hop out and work it! On our previous trip the group appointed me, as the engineer of the group, to figure out how to work the lock, making me the group's perennial lock expert, dubbed the "Lock Jess Monster". I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement, since working the locks is fun!

Tom waiting to enter the lock, pulling my kayak along

The Lock Jess Monster astride the lock

Swinging the lock door open

We found the lock set up in the right direction. I hopped out and handed the bow line from my kayak to Tom. He and Rob paddled into the lock pulling my boat along, after which I closed the lock doors, worked the "wickets" to adjust the water level, then opened the lock doors on the other side. Hopping back into my kayak was a little tricky, as the dock is high (at motor boat height), but not too big of a deal. Then we were on our way into Lower Saranac Lake.

As with Middle Saranac Lake, at this time of year the campsites on Lower Saranac were first come, first served with plenty of availability, but there was a catch: many of the sites on Lower lacked suitable landings for kayaks. They were fine for motor boats or in some cases canoes - in both of those you can step out of the boat onto shore while the boat is still floating - but lacked the kind of beach area needed to land kayaks. Score one for canoes as the paddlecraft of choice for these lakes, I guess. We paddled around for a while looking at different campsites. After a while the wind started to pick up and the lake got choppy, making it that much harder to paddle our loaded kayaks (Rob had weighed his gear before departure and reported that he had 140 lbs. of gear with him - gearwise we aren't exactly backpacker light). Finally we chose Site 49, an expansive, open site which had a good location, 180 degree view of the water, and a usable (if small) landing area (though no lean-to shelter this time). It was once again my turn to make dinner - my home-made dehydrated vegetarian black bean and quinoa (and onion) chili, topped with cheesy goop made from Rob's dehydrated jalapeño cheese powder.

Lower Saranac Lake, being more developed, is noisier than we had gotten used to on Middle. We would hear boats from time to time, and at night I could hear traffic in the distance. Still, I slept well my nights there.

This bag of crusty brown bupkes successfully reconstituted into delicious chili!

Second Campsite

New York State wants to make sure you know that the outhouse isn't cleaned daily

Need to get the outhouse picture out of your head? Here's a pretty one of morning mist on the lake

About 5 miles kayaking

Friday

Friday was something of a repeat of our Middle Saranac exploration. We set out to explore Lower Saranac Lake, using the goal of visiting all the campsites as something of a game to motivate us and guide our route. Having entered the lake at its southernmost point we headed north to new territory. To make a long story short, we determined the following campsites to be the best for kayaks: 42 (which has a large beach, but is said to be very popular - hard to get), 36, 49 (where we stayed), and 59. In addition, we noted that Site 9 has the best view from the privy of any of the sites. Some of this information was confirmed by a guy we spotted relaxing in a folding chair in the water. He seemed to have a good knowledge of the lake's campsites and said the one he was at had the best sunset views. Actually, he technically was camped in a site adjacent to the one with the best views, since the good view campsite had been shut down by the authorities, so he reserves an immediately adjacent site and makes use of the good view one.

While Middle Saranac Lake is almost completely undeveloped, Lower Saranac has large sections where the shoreline is private, so as we paddled we got to look at the various lake houses, which ranged from cabins up to "Wow!"-sized estate homes. A fella can dream, right? At the top of the lake we paddled into Ampersand Bay (I don't know why the name "Ampersand" is so popular in this area), where we took a lunch break at the public launch. I had packed some of the previous evening's leftover chili into a Thermos, and I ate it for lunch with some trepidation that unrefrigerated it might have spoiled overnight. I'm happy to report I suffered no ill effects from this culinary risk-taking (overnight temps down into the 40's probably helped retard spoilage).

A better map of the lakes

At lunch break

On the lake

Back at camp we were able to make a fire from wood we had once again scavenged from campsites. On our way into Lower Lake the previous day we had passed a campsite (Site 29) which seemed to have a significant amount of wood stacked on the picnic table. Unfortunately, with loaded boats we had no way to carry it and we never made it back to that site to pick it up. That's too bad, because unbeknownst to us some friends of ours were also kayaking the Saranacs that week and if we had returned to Site 29 we would have run into them, since when they arrived on Long Lake the day after we did they made camp at that site!

Tom provided dinner: pasta with meatballs/sauce out of a bag, with freshly shaved parmesan cheese (I'm pretty sure the sauce had onions in it). Lesson-learned: tomato sauce is not a good choice on camping trips, as it's really hard to wash out of dishes. Fortunately, this was the last night we were cooking in camp so when I did the dishes (my turn again) I didn't have to worry about getting our cooking gear sparkling clean.

Oh, one additional thing: the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashonah began Friday night. The lunar Jewish calendar slides around relative to the Gregorian calendar, and every once in a while Rosh Hashonah, one of the holiest days of the Jewish year, falls within the period of our trip. There are different ways of finding closeness with G-d, or whatever you choose to call him/her/they/it. A kayaker friend who is a Pentacostal Minister (!) and I once discussed feeling the divine in the outdoors, and he told me about different "sacred pathways" - he pointed me to a (Christian) reference that described nine sacred pathways, two of which are Traditionalists (Loving G-d through ritual and symbol - what I would have been doing by attending synagogue services back home), and Naturalists (Loving G-d outdoors). Similar ideas appear within Judaism as well: 18th Century Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, recognizing the holiness of nature, recommended a practice of spontaneous unscripted prayer in the wilderness, and the Medieval Jewish Kabbalist mystics believed that there was a flow of divine energy, the shefa (שפע), which ultimately manifested itself in the physical world. Much like a wet PFD which is a lifejacket but which also contains water throughout, everything we experience in the world around us is infused with a divine energy from the shefa, known as the shechinah (שְׁכִינָה). Closer to the present day, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a 20th century Jewish philosopher (and civil rights activist - he marched with Martin Luther King!), stated that the path to "faith" is via "awe", and that "awe" can be achieved via "wonder" and "radical amazement" - including amazement at the natural world - rivers, flowers, forests, mountains, and such. All of which is to say that I felt I had sufficient philosophical cover to skip services and observe Rosh Hashonah via the "wonder" of nature, immersed in the natural world. In the midst of sensing the divine energy I did also engage in prayer, having brought along a copy of a Rosh Hashonah machzor (prayerbook) on my phone. I read through the evening service while sitting at the campfire, and in doing so experienced a closeness with the divine perhaps beyond what I would have felt in synagogue. Except maybe for the part of the evening I spent scrubbing tomato sauce out of the pots. There is no divine presence in greasy dishes. 

Also, after Rob and Tom went to bed I shaved for the first time since the beginning of the trip - cleaning up a little seemed appropriate for the holiday, plus I must admit I was driven a little by vanity since I knew we were going into town the next day.

Oh, and one additional additional thing: all day Rob was receiving pictures from his son's wedding, which he enthusiastically shared with Tom and me. It might seem strange that Rob was with us rather than at the ceremony, but this is one of those complicated situations with multiple religions, multiple locations, and multiple families, with not every piece of the family present at every step along the way - Rob will have plenty of opportunity to participate in other facets of what will be a rolling multi-dimensional series of wedding events (my brother had similar complications with his wedding forty years ago - some things never change).

Another shot of doing dishes, or a Bigfoot sighting? You decide

Pretty light on the lake

10.5 miles kayaked

Saturday

Saturday was our final full day of the trip, and we decided to make it a big one, with a long paddle through First and Second Ponds and up through Oseetah and Flower Lakes (and through another lock, this one operated by park staff) to the town of Saranac Lake, where we would have the luxury of another restaurant meal. This was going to be our longest day, about 16 miles total, albeit with a long lunch break in the middle.

The three of us on the water

I get to go in a lock, since this one had an operator

The paddle up through the ponds and the lakes was much like the prior day, kept interesting by ever changing scenery - sometimes a narrow river, sometimes open and undeveloped, sometimes peppered with cool Adirondack-style homes. We were fighting a headwind all the way north, which slowed me down, keeping me somewhat behind Rob and Tom.  Much like my slowness going uphill on a bike, I think my skinny little body just doesn't generate the horsepower (or is it torque?) to fully overcome obstacles like headwinds or hills. Over lunch I mentioned how I had found the wind challenging. I was really hoping we'd slow down a little bit on the way back, but didn't want to suffer the embarrassment of explicitly asking the group to slow down, so I kind of hinted around about it ("gee, we're ahead of schedule - no need to rush on the way back!"). Rob, to his credit, recognized that in my comments I was fishing for something; however he incorrectly concluded that what I was looking was to have my ego assuaged for having been at the back of the pack all day. He reassured me that there were plenty of times when he struggled to keep up. I've paddled with Rob enough to know that this is patently untrue, but it was nice of him to fib in an attempt to make me feel better. I also suspect Tom slows down for me, given that when we paddle together he spends a lot of time coasting - or maybe he's just a paddle hard/rest/paddle hard/rest kind of guy. It used to be better when we had one or two women in the group who, like me, had shorter, slower kayaks, and who (also like me) paddled like girls.

In any case, we didn't wind up taking any more of a relaxed pace on the way home but it was fine; the twisty river was a great speed equalizer and I got back just a little behind the others. 

Getting to town in Saranac Lake

Relaxing in civilization

Upon reaching the town of Saranac Lake we landed at the lakefront park, changed clothes and locked our kayaks to the parking lot barriers. Our first stop was the nearby Saranac Lake farmers' market, where we browsed the surprisingly good-looking (for up north in September) veggies, and craft items including expensive rustic furniture. My hands had been really dry so I bought a little tub of fir-scented hand cream (it's pretty good hand cream - I think it's got onions in it). Then we went to lunch at Nona, a lakefront Italian restaurant. We sat outside, which gave us a pleasant view and spared the other diners the full force of our unwashed odor. It had been my intention to order pizza, but when I saw they had eggplant parmigiana heroes on the menu, I couldn't resist. I ordered the large (12") size, figuring I'd eat maybe a little more than half - but I wound up inhaling the whole thing. It had been our intention to bring a takeout dinner back to camp (likely more sandwiches) - but we all ate so much at lunch that we couldn't envision needing another full meal and, given that it was our last night, figured we'd just nosh on whatever foodstuffs each of us had left at camp.

Locking up the kayaks in town

Farmers Market

Veggies!

Someone taking wedding photos on shore!

After lunch we stopped into the lakefront mini-mart where we bought a bundle of firewood, which we distributed among the three kayaks for the trip back, and I got a Pepsi (boo, no Coke products available but yay, caffeine!). Then we paddled back home.

Back to camp through the lower lock - shared with two guys in vintage motorboats

In the evening we had a nice fire with our kiln-dried store-bought wood, and as planned, noshed on our leftover food - my delicious dinner was PB&J on week-old lavash bread, wasabi-flavored edamame, chocolate, and wine. It was a beautiful evening with stars reflecting off the glassy lake surface and the sounds of loons in the distance; on such a nice evening, we hated to start breaking camp.

Evening in camp

15.5 miles kayaked

Sunday

Sunday we broke camp for the last time and headed back through the Saranac River (this time we shared the lock with a pontoon boat), then through Middle Saranac Lake to our cars. As is his wont, Tom took off immediately after loading up. Rob and I stopped in town and got breakfast (the restaurant had breakfast platters called "Upper Lox" and "Lower Lox") and poked our heads into the Hamlets to Huts store, where they guy behind the counter immediately asked us, "how long have you been out?" Somehow he knew we'd been camping - not sure whether what tipped him off was our disheveled appearance or ripe smell. 

Overall, another great paddling adventure.

Back through the Upper Lock

Back at the launch

So much gear to unload!

6.2 miles kayaked

A few additional notes can be found here.

Saranacs Paddling Trip Part I: Middle Saranac

Friday-Saturday

When you read about the great expeditions, you hear about the difficulties they encountered - freezing winters, insurmountable mountains, but you never hear about where they parked the car. Lewis and Clark started their expedition in St. Louis with 35 men - where did they leave their cars for two and a half years? Likewise Shackleton: when his lifeboats reached South Georgia Island after harrowing survival in the Antarctic, did he still have his parking stub? Yeah, it's all about the parking. Or at least it seemed so as we headed north for our Adirondack trip.

When I had drafted the itinerary for our Saranac trip, my vision was to park the cars once and travel strictly by water from there for the full week of our trip. The challenge was that I came across vague references to a 24 hour parking limit at the only boat launch on Middle Saranac Lake. So back in July I called the office which administers the campsites on the lakes to ask about parking and got an answer along the lines of "you should be alright". That half-way response never really sat well with me, and when just days before our trip  I found a photo of a sign at the launch site that indeed said there's 24 hour parking limit and that violators would be ticketed and towed, and not wanting to come back from a week of paddling to find the cars gone, I got on the phone again to attempt to get to the root of the matter.

To make a long story short (a number of calls were involved), I eventually spoke with the New York State Park Ranger for the area, Ranger Jeff, who reassured me that "you should be alright". Sigh. On its own that wasn't any better than the answer I'd received back in July, but he did go on to offer further reassurance: he said that there really was only one Department of Environmental Conservation officer who was a stickler about the parking limit, and that officer had recently backed off. Ranger Jeff also said he would issue me a backcountry camping permit (something I hadn't known was needed), which if displayed in our cars would lessen the chances of our getting ticketed. Most importantly, he reassured me that they didn't really tow cars from the lot; our worst risk was a parking ticket.

Ranger Jeff's first attempt to email us the backcountry pass disappeared into the ether, and suffice it to say that after some more texting back and forth while already en route to the Adirondacks I finally received the pass, which I was able to print print at the hotel we stayed at in Coxsackie, NY on the drive up. However last minute, Ranger Jeff came through for us, and we were able to launch with greatly reduced anxiety about the parking situation.

There are two basic routes to the eastern Adirondacks: the ostensibly shorter route up the I95 corridor and the New York State Thruway, or the less direct route up through Binghamton. Rob and I, driving together, chose the former, but a combination of Friday afternoon traffic and flooded highways due to torrential rain greatly slowed us down. In the end our trip wasn't really much faster than Tall Tom's travel up the "longer", western route.

Upstate New York: Even the Best Western parking lot is kind of scenic

We split the drive up across two days (hence the hotel in Coxsackie), and both Tom's and our cars rolled into our meeting place of Lake Placid at around the same time. Rob and I spotted some strange towers as we approached Lake Placid. When we saw the sign for the ski jumping complex we realized that the towers must be the top of the ski jumps. We pulled into the complex, where we found skiers ski jumping. In the summer. On grass. Wild! We sat and watched the jumpers for a while (if you bought a ticket you could go to the top, but we were fine watching from the free observation area at the bottom), and after the first of a surprising number of shopping trips we'd make during the week (this first one was browsing at the ski jump gift shop), we headed into town and met up with Tom.

Snowless ski jumping!

Lunch in Lake Placid

The three of us had a lovely lunch at a restaurant overlooking Mirror Lake, strolled Main Street (more shopping!), went to the supermarket (and, ahem, liquor store) for last minute supplies, then headed to the AirBnB I had booked for us, which was surprisingly nice. We depressed ourselves looking at the weather forecast, which at the time was showing a very wet week, then cheered ourselves up with a nice dinner in town (rainbow trout for me, harking back to long-ago upstate NY meals at Rudi's Big Indian). The restaurant staff was all Balkan exchange students - our waitress was from Montenegro, and the hostess was from Bosnia - interesting.

Local rainbow trout

Sunday

Sunday's forecast called for rain starting mid-morning and increasing in intensity over the course of the day. We momentarily toyed with staying in town for another night and waiting it out, but decided to man up and hit the water. With a goal of getting to a campsite ahead of the heavy rain we ate breakfast "at home" rather than going out to a restaurant, then headed to the launch, where we were pleased to find no rain yet and fairly few cars, only a small subset of which appeared to be equipped to carry boats - a good sign that we'd have solitude out on the lake. But the launch was far from deserted: every time we visited (and we would be there more times than expected, as I will explain), we ran across other folks launching or landing. 

Signing in at the South Creek launch

As we were loading our boats we had our first piece of good luck: some canoe campers returning to the launch told us they had just vacated Site 63, which they described as a sweet camping spot with a lean-to shelter - a shelter is a lovely luxury, particularly in the rainy conditions such as we were expecting. We made a bee-line for that site, along the way crossing the line of participants in the Adirondack Canoe Classic, a three day, 90 mile paddling race across a series of Adirondack lakes. For readers who are not paddlers, 90 miles in three days is a lot. On our longest day we kayaked about 16 miles. These folks paddle about double that, three days in a row. Our Pirates of Georgetown friend Nate was participating in the race - we didn't see him, but every once in a while once at our campsite (which was within site of the line of racers) Tom would yell out "Go Nate!" just in case he was within earshot.

Loading the kayaks

Setting out

Rob and Tom, with Adirondack 90 Miler participants in the background

Our timing worked out well vis a vis the rain.. We got camp set up - tents plus a tarp over the picnic table - in light drizzle before the rain began in earnest. Once the rain started to come down at around 3:30 PM we retreated to the lean-to shelter and relaxed. Fortunately, the weather was fairly warm: cold rain is the worst.

On these trips we take care of our own breakfasts and lunches individually, and we take turns cooking for the group. Rob made dinner the first night, a chicken sausage jambalaya (made with a Zatarain's jambalaya packet), enhanced with lots of onions. 

After dinner I finally changed out of my paddling clothes and when I came back to the lean-to I found the first indication that the lean-to was sentient. Rob had spread out a bunch of his gear on one side of the lean-to, and Tom had spread out a bunch of his on the right. Somehow the lean-to had left enough room only for their two chairs. The few things I had placed in the shelter (my chair, two empty water bottles and a small lantern) had been mysteriously shoved to the back. Seeing that my little bit of stuff had been cast aside triggered in me a rather over-the-top pissy martyr fit, but rather than confront the lean-to and tell it to make room for me I left and mopily read my book at the picnic table until the rain got to be too much (the tarp offers only so much protection in heavy rain) at which point I made my way back into the shelter. 

Our campsite on Middle Saranac Lake

Rob and Tom enjoying shelter while I sat at the picnic table. If you look closely you can spot my chair shoved to the back

Cooking with onions

Chicken sausage jambalaya

Dinnertime!

Speaking of the lean-to, our time at Site 63 included one recurring sitcom-worthy gag. The lean-to had evidently been designed with average height people in mind, but Tall Tom is, well, tall. Rob and I could walk up and into to the lean-to with no issue, but Tom needed to duck to clear the roof. Again and again he would forget and would whack his head on the edge of the lean-to roof. This would trigger a brief half-serious, half-joking obscenity-filled rant about "short people". I felt sorry for the guy, who I imagine puts up with a certain amount of discomfort living in a world designed for people who are not his size, but as he banged his head again and again all it seemed like all we were missing was a studio audience laugh track.

I never sleep well my first night in a tent. Growing up in New York City in the crime-ridden days of the 70's, darkness meant danger, a feeling I have never fully ditched. Long ago I had a friend (who was also from Brooklyn, but somehow less skittish than I) who would tease me about my city kid jumpiness at strange sounds in the woods in the dark by saying I was afraid of the "terrifying night squirrel". After a while of tossing and turning while the rain and the woods made all kinds of sounds around me I got the idea of putting on headphones and listening to something soothing. Unfortunately, our cell coverage was limited (plus while camping you need to be careful with battery consumption) and so I was limited to the playlists I had previously downloaded on my phone, the most soothing of which was a collection of mostly light jazz from Valerie's birthday party. I fell asleep to the sounds of cocktail party jazz, accompanied by the terrifying night squirrel on percussion.

2.2 miles kayaking

Doing dishes on a rainy, foggy evening

Monday

On our first full day of paddling we decided to make a full loop of Middle Saranac Lake, including going up into Weller Pond. To make it a little more interesting (and because we were curious), we decided to paddle past as many of the lake's roughly twenty-five campsites as we could along the way. Middle Saranac Lake is the most isolated of the three Saranac Lakes in that there is direct access via just the one car-top (canoe & kayak) boat launch; to get onto the lake via motorboat you have to launch on Lower Saranac Lake then motor some distance and pass through a lock and a twisty river. Thus, Middle Saranac is pretty quiet. With the 90 miler race done we saw few boats and found just two other campsites occupied. We had our own little paddling paradise almost to ourselves. And we confirmed that our site was, indeed, the sweetest one.

Part of our week's planned itinerary was to explore Upper Saranac Lake on Wednesday. There is no direct water connection between Middle and Upper Saranac Lakes, so this would involve a portage (that means carrying the kayaks across land) of about half a mile in each direction. We had done this in one direction on our previous traversal of the Saranac Lakes, with loaded kayaks no less. We made Bartlett Carry, the portage spot, our lunch break, and walked up the road between the lakes to remind ourselves of what we were in for. The first 50 yards or so is a very hilly, rocky dirt path, and the rest is a still somewhat hilly but less vertical dirt road. On our previous trip we ruined one kayak cart and pretty well exhausted ourselves carrying the kayaks and all our gear. Being somewhat older and realizing we'd have to do the carry twice this time (albeit with empty kayaks), we began considering an alternate plan to access Upper Saranac Lake: to paddle back to the cars and drive the couple of miles to a launch on Lower Saranac Lake. We spent some time musing which was worse: doing the portage or loading and unloading the boats twice, but ultimately this debate turned out to be academic because - spoiler alert - we never made it to Upper Saranac Lake.

Exploring the lake

The good news is that in the course of visiting the campsites we were able to scavenge some firewood left behind by various sites' previous occupants. When we got back to camp Rob and Tom showered using Tom's portable shower unit. I napped, valuing sleep over cleanliness (hey, we were only one day into the trip - we were barely even dirty). It was my turn to prepare dinner, which was a well received Middle Eastern chicken with couscous, dried fruit, and pistachios (and of course, onions).

Keeping an eye on Rob's boat while he explores a campsite

After dinner we built a fire with our scavenged firewood. Once again, the shelter treated my belongings as some sort of invading virus. While we sat in the shelter I kept getting questions like, "Is this your water? Is this your sunscreen?" from the other occupants, as if they were antibodies detecting and trying to eject foreign substances from the cell. 

Middle Eastern chicken - tasted better than it looked

Monday evening was much nicer than Sunday!

Let me add that when backcountry camping, it's generally a good idea to hang your food. This is generally known as a bear hang, but is often more about protecting the food from raccoons and rodents than bears. The primarily coniferous trees at our campsite didn't offer any big limbs suitable for a real bear hang; however, we were all using bear-resistant Ursack storage bags, which supposedly don't need to be hung high. I still followed the precaution of hanging my food in the woods outside our camp; Rob and Tom just hung theirs from a high nail on the lean-to, which was a very effective critter hang but which maybe could have attracted bears into our campsite. No harm done - unlike past trips where raccoons stole a food bag and drank our liquor (really!), we saw no evidence of aggressive critters during this trip. Even the day we forgot to put the trash away before heading out for the day we returned home to find it unmolested. Maybe the critters had a work stoppage in solidarity with the striking Hollywood writers, or something.

I slept better Monday night - with each successive night the terrifying night squirrel becomes progressively less terrifying.

About 13 miles kayaking

Another pretty lake shot

Tuesday

Tuesday was our hiking day. There's a nice hike which is accessible from the water, up Ampersand Mountain. As described on a Saranac Lake website, "Ampersand Mountain's open summit provides breathtaking 360-degree views, but you'll have to work for it. The first half of the trail is fairly easy, but once it starts going up it's relentlessly steep until the top."

Ampersand climb

On our previous trip we had kayaked directly to a beach at the base of the mountain and had hiked up from there. This time, we paddled back to the cars. loaded the kayaks, then drove about a mile to the trail head, where we changed into the hiking clothes we had cleverly staged in the car. This way we didn't have to worry about all our paddling gear and clothing being left unattended on the beach all day, and Rob got a chance to charge his CPAP battery a little (more on this in Wednesday's writeup). 

I will mention that one of the fun things about the Adirondacks is running into kindred spirits who are also out enjoying crazy outdoor stuff. We had launched at 8 AM and when we got to the put-in about 45 minutes later we ran across a self-described "old lady group" of kayakers, about eight women who had converged from various states to paddle the lake. They were happily preparing to get underway up to Weller Pond as a day paddle - our two groups wished each other well as we each headed out to our adventures.

The Ampersand hike is indeed "relentlessly steep". The trail doesn't have any switchbacks; rather, it's 1,775 feet of rocky, muddy, slippery trails and rock scrambles (for comparison, the Empire State Building, even including the spire and antenna/blimp mooring mast, stands a mere 1,450 ft. tall). It's a popular hike, yielding plenty of opportunities to joke about the difficulty with fellow sufferers on the way up. In particular, I felt sorry for one older (than us!) couple. He clearly had dragged her into doing the hike and she Was. Not. Happy. I don't know if I feel more sorry for her for her discomfort on the trail, or for him for the hell he was going to get that evening for having subjected her to the hike.

View of Middle Saranac Lake from the top of Ampersand

At the summit

Trust me - our campsite is in the background

I started out lagging behind a little, which bummed me out as I had remembered being out in front on our previous visit - had I really gotten that out of shape? However, as the group's initial exuberant pace faded with the trail's increasing steepness, I was cheered by the fact that while the others kept wanting breaks, I would have been fine continuing with far fewer stops. I am not good at going fast, but I excel at "slow and steady".

Anyway, the Ampersand hike has a great payoff - a rocky area up top which indeed has 360 degree views. From the 3,373 ft. high summit we could see the lake we had paddled the previous day, the lakes we planned to paddle for the rest of the week, and even our campsite (well, where we knew it was - we couldn't really see our camp). Up top of the mountain everyone is pretty happy - because they've survived the climb but more so because of the amazing views.

Rob was the clear speed champ walking down, which may seem like it would be easy compared with going up but in fact carries its own challenges in terms of muscles worked and finding solid footing. Once at the bottom we drove back to the boat launch, unloaded our boats, changed back into paddling clothes, and kayaked back to our campsite - a successful and very efficient day. I availed myself of a shower.

Backcountry shower

Our tired and hungry group was reinvigorated by Tom's deliciously oniony dinner of Thai chicken and chickpea curry (enhanced pouch meals), with appetizers including red pepper feta dip and salmon on crackers.  It was my turn to do the dishes. Lesson learned: do dishes before dark so you don't accidentally lose silverware in the lake (we found the missing items the next day). Our evening conversation surprisingly focused on comparative religion: Tom had a lot of questions about Judaism, and added some tidbits about how our faith contrasts with Catholicism.

Once again, the lean-to shoved my chair to the back. In the photo I'm sitting where I found it.

Thai chicken curry dinner

I slept well, thanks to a combination of exhaustion, red wine, and benadryl. 

About 4.5 miles kayaking and 6 miles hiking, including 1,775 ft. elevation change each direction.

Wednesday

As forecast, rain moved in overnight and Wednesday dawned grey and rainy. We had agreed that since the weather was bad we would skip our planned excursion to Upper Saranac Lake (the trip with the portage), and instead we had a lazy morning in camp. I stayed in my tent until 8 AM, at which point I got up and made myself breakfast (my typical grits & peanut powder, plus decaf Via Brew coffee); Tom and Rob emerged from their tents 9:30ish, just in time for me to go back to my tent for a mid-morning nap.

Hanging things to dry in the rain 

Cooking/eating area

The lean-to, showing both orchestra and loge seating

Throughout the trip we followed several different weather forecasts, which of course never agreed. When the rain stopped around mid-day in agreement with The Weather Channel's forecast, we decided that their forecast, which showed no further rain, must be the accurate one for the day, and so we decided we could head out on the water. 

Rob brings a travel CPAP on our trips along with a portable power station thingy to recharge it (the amount of stuff Rob fits into his kayak is simply mind-boggling). At this point in the trip all his batteries needed a recharge and so, given the purportedly clearing weather, we decided to paddle back to the put-in again, where Rob could recharge his batteries off the car. And, while we were at it, we could do the very unbackcountry thing of getting lunch in town 😊. The weather didn't quite oblige, in that the rain started up again almost as soon as we launched - but no matter, kayaking is a water sport and we expect to get wet. I will add that despite it being mid-day, mid-week, and rainy, back at the put-in we came across some stalwart people launching onto the lake.

After locking the kayaks up to a fence at the launch (less work than loading them onto the cars) and plugging in all of our gadgets in the car, we drove into town where we were immediately distracted by St. Regis Outfitters, a nice looking outdoors/paddling store. More shopping! I bought a t-shirt and a new coffee mug to supplant the mug I normally use, a well-worn freebie mug from a 2006 Idaho rafting trip.

Unplanned shopping trip!

We ate lunch at Bitters and Bones, which at first glance appeared to be just a neighborhood bar - the kind of place where everyone at the bar turns and stares when unfamiliar faces walk in - but the menu turned out to be a little more upscale than first appearances would lead you to believe. The guys kidded me for flirting with the (admittedly attractive) waitress because I complimented the "fairy hair" tinsel hair extensions she was sporting. In truth, I don't really like the fairy hair look (which is popular among the DC Deadhead crowd), so maybe I was laying it on a little thick. But really, what I was attracted to was a hot restaurant meal, not the waitress. I ordered the Caribbean chicken sandwich, which I devoured. I even ate about a third of the fries which came with it, probably doubling the number of French fries I've eaten in the past six years. And I had an iced tea. With caffeine! I was living large, and loving it.

Lunch at Bitters and Bones (not shown: Rob's batteries, which were plugged into an outlet alongside the table)

After lunch we reversed the process: back to the launch, changed from street clothes back into paddling clothes, unlocked the boats and paddled back to camp. We were too full to need another full meal for dinner. Instead, we all just noshed. Plus, we enjoyed the cold beer we had brought back from town - and talked about religion some more. In anticipation of breaking camp the next morning we began to pack up some non-essentials (shower, tarp, etc.). 

Chatting by the fire

About 4.5 miles kayaking

Continue to Part II of this trip report.