We didn't go out to eat yesterday morning since we were traveling, so yesterday on our way back from Essex we looked for a place to have breakfast this morning. It's pretty slim picking without driving a while, so we decided to have cereal here at Bentley and we'll wait until we get to Fairfax. Hopefully there will be a few more breakfast selections there.
It was 9:30 before we left to drive to Lake Placid - home of the 1932 and 1980 Olympics. You might also remember the movie "Lake Placid" about a killer alligator. We are not getting in Lake Placid - just in case, but we look forward to our visit in the city of Lake Placid. It was a very interesting place and it would be fun to attend some of the actual Olympic events, but afraid that might be out of our price range. So we enjoyed looking around at what was available to see while we were here today.
 |
| On our drive to Lake Placid |
 |
| As we neared Lake Placid we saw these ski jumps built just outside of town. |
Our first stop was at the Visitor's Center.
 |
| Such a gorgeous building. To the left is the Olympic Center. |
A very nice lady assisted us. I told her we only had a few hours to spend here, so what should we make sure we see or do. She told us next door was the Olympic Center where the Ice Rink is. A group of ice hockey coaches are here for a conference. She thought they might be playing hockey at the rink if we wanted to check it out. She also mentioned the Ski Area where we could take the gondola to the top of the mountain area and back down again. Another area that is open to the public is the Olympic Sports Complex where various olympic events are open for visitors to participate in, such as the bobsled ride. We did consider going to both the gondola and the bobsled ride, but opted not to since it would put us over on our entertainment budget this month. We drove into the area where the gondola entrance was and there was a considerable amount of people there. Since we are not fond of large crowds, we were not too disappointed we passed it up. Seeing it was good enough for us.
I also inquired about suggestions of good lunch spots. She gave us several options, with a BBQ spot sounding pretty good. She said it was her favorite and if we liked BarBQ, she thought we would really enjoy "Smoke Signals". It is a large restaurant that overlooks Mirror Lake, with a nice outside deck as well. It was about 11:15, so we decided to walk to the restaurant - several blocks away, hoping we might beat the rush. We certainly did that - it didn't open until noon. Dean suggested we walk on down main street to check out the various shops and eating establishments, which we did, enjoying the beautiful day and the exercise. Once we returned we waited for 7-8 minutes before they opened the door. We were the second ones in the door, and were seated outside on the deck where we had a perfect view of the water. It was such a beautiful day with a nice breeze. We enjoyed watching the paddle boarder's, kayaker's and a couple of young girls who kept yelling, "Daddy, watch me" as they jumped off a floating dock into the water. It was such a gorgeous day and extremely relaxing.
 |
| See the two canoes - we thought they were going to collide, but the one in front managed to get past the one coming from the left before that happened! The little girls were later jumping from the floating platform. We watched planes flying over the lake and many paddleboarder's. We do love being near the water. |
 |
| This is looking back at the seating area in the outdoor portion of the restaurant. |
 |
| Smoke Signals own in house BBQ sauce. |
For lunch Dean ordered the Island Skewer - grilled shrimp with a vegetable skewer (onions, red & green peppers), coconut rice and cornbread. Unfortunately he does not like red & green peppers so that was a bit disappointing, but all in all he said the meal was pretty good. I chose the Southwest Salad with pulled pork, romaine, corn, black beans, cherry tomatoes, pepper jack cheese, tortilla strips, sour cream and their Perpetual Pig (House) BBQ. It was delicious and HUGE! I brought half of it home with us. Again, I got twice the food that Dean did. I failed to take a picture or you would see what I mean. I expected a few pieces of pulled pork. Instead, it was an amount large enough for a small sandwich on top of the salad.
We walked back to the truck to put my leftovers inside, then we walked into the Olympic Center but by then there was nothing going on, so we left downtown Lake Placid.
 |
| In front of the Olympic Center in downtown Lake Placid. |
 |
| Olympic Center |
 |
| Bob Sled on display in the Olympic Center |
 |
| Taken from a balcony overlooking downtown Lake Placid from inside the Olympic Center |
 |
| Taken from a balcony overlooking downtown Lake Placid from inside the Olympic Center |
 |
| Taken from a balcony overlooking downtown Lake Placid from inside the Olympic Center. There was a wedding taking place at the church on the left as we walked through downtown. Parking was very limited here. |
 |
| Couple more pictures of downtown area as we drove through Lake Placid. |
We decided to drive to the top of Whiteface Mountain. It is the 4th highest point in New York at 4,867'. It was truly a beautiful day and we drove with the windows down a good part of the way, in order to get better pictures and just to feel the breeze. The temperature did drop to 69 degrees from the upper 70's, which was perfect.
 |
| We met this car as we started up - we wondered if he went all the way to the top. Going up isn't bad, but coming down is 4 miles of pretty steep grade. |
 |
| I'll let these pictures speak for themselves. The view was amazing at every turn, every stop and at the top. God's beauty always amazes me! |
 |
| Lake Placid |
 |
| Ski slopes |
 |
| To the left are two godola rides up the mountain. |
 |
| Beautiful brook that run along side the roadway. |
 |
| A closeup of the gondola taking riders to the top. |
We had an enjoyable day visiting the Lake Placid area and Whiteface Mountain. We needed some bread before returning to teh campground, so we stopped at what we though was a local grocery store. It had some food items but it was the most interesting "market" we have ever been in. We did buy a loaf of bread and a small bag of potato chips. The lady who owns and runs it told us that less than 10 years ago she had 7 people working for her, but now it is just her.
 |
| Most of the shelves are now more flea market the grocery market, however there were locally grown vegetables, bread, some frozen items, cookies, muffins, and many other food items on hand. She also has various things that a hardware store might carry - she mentioned electrical tape and wood screws. I would guess that this store will not be around for very many more years due to her age. It will be a big loss to this community. |
She told us that once they built the Wal-mart and Sam's 40 miles north everyone goes there on Friday evenings to buy groceries. They have also lost all three of their gas stations - mostly due to the new requirements with installing underground gas tanks. As the long time owners closed, no one wanted to take on the cost of replacing them so they have remained closed. This is what we see in so many of our small towns across the country. It makes me all the more thankful for our own hometown grocery store G&W, and gas stations.
As we continued our drive back to the campground I took a few more pictures:
 |
| Beautiful home along the lake shore. |
 |
| The two pictures above show a sailboat leaving the shore, headed out on the lake. |
After we returned to our campsite, and carried all of our items in from the day, we decided to sit outside for awhile and drink a glass of iced tea, before walking down the metal steps to get a closer look at Lake Champlain.
 |
| Dean enjoying the lake. |
 |
| The wind came up pretty quick from the time we saw the sailboat earlier to the time we made it to be the beach. |
 |
| There were some pretty large boulders at the bottom of the hill. We wondered how they ended up at this spot. |
 |
| The metal walkway leading down to the beach. There was a path along the water where you could go up another walkway, but the wind was really slapping at the rocks - we were sure to get wet if we followed it, so we passed and went back up the way we came down. |
Tomorrow we pick up our landing gear and head to Vermont.
No comments:
Post a Comment