Lake Placid vacation

Back to my trip to Lake Placid. We arrived at our hotel, Wildwood Inn at around 4:30 pm. Just a little side note, Wildwood Inn is a comfy hotel with an indoor heated pool and spa, as well as a backyard view of Lake Placid and complementary canoes to canoe there. This hotel may not have been the flashy kind like common ones such as the Mariott, but it’s homey. They provided hot chocolate, tea, cider and coffee as well as apples, granola bars and muffins. Sufficient for a brisk morning breakfast. Back to vacation. As soon as we got into our hotel room, I turned on the television and searched immediately for ESPN2. I knew Serena would be playing against Kuznetsova and I had to watch if my lioness of a tennis player was aiming at victory. But no, Kuznetsova was beating her. Needless to say, I was worried and distressed. Despite Serena’s loss, I was proud of her for making it this far in the French Open. She hadn’t gone this far since she won it back in 2002. So, still good job Serna! After I watched the match, I was too dishearted to swim in the pool. So was Steph. Instead, we went around the Olympic village, looking for a place to eat dinner. We found that the whole place was cold and pretty much empty. We were wondering if it was just because it was late already or if it’s always empty. The restaurant owners of the restaurant we went to (which was a chinese one – it was the only one still open) said that there aren’t many people there in that time of year because it’s not even summer yet. Touche. We had better luck on Thursday.

The weather on Thursday was much better. It was warmer and sunnier. Thank goodness! This was the day we did many activities. We started out early, eating what the hotel offered (which I mentioned earlier) for breakfast. The first activity was the unbelievable, indelible private plane ride. For 25 bucks, we got a 20 minute tour of the mountains surrounding Lake Placid, as well as other lakes, in the air. The seats were close together of course but that made it all the more comfy – at least to me. I don’t know about people who are claustrophobic. We had these headphones that also served as a communication device. Sort of like a walkie talkie head phone. We could hear each other talk and prevent the loud, annoying sound of the plane from getting into our heads too much, simultaneously. I have to admit, the turbulent moments of the rides were pretty exciting, as opposed to scary. I had no doubt in my mind that we would crash and fall. I guess it was because my excitement blocked my knowledge of known fears. Honestly, I totally forgot about falling and any crash landings. That only made the ride more fascinating. It was just my parents, Steph and I and the pilot in the plane between the sylvan mountain tops and innocuous clouds. Sigh and a reverie. Next, we went on a chair lift to the ski jump that Olympic athletes used. The chair lift was steeper than I thought! I sat with Steph while Daddy sat with Mommy. Let me rephrase that: while Daddy attempted to sit with Mommy. Unfortunately, the first attempt was unsuccessful because Mommy had a hard time getting on the chair while it was moving. I looked behind to see how my parents were doing and sadly I found Daddy on the one behind us and Mommy on the one behind him. Mommy had a hot orange string tied to her chair. I’ll you do the math as to what that means. I sort of felt bad for other people on the lift because they stopped the whole chair life system to get Mommy on. It was all in good fun though. When we reached the top, we were looking down at a steep hill full of grass. But to get to the very top, we had to take an elevator ride, a quite interesting one I would say. The man in charge of the elevator had told us that the reason we were seeing so many bikers – the motorcycle ones – was because they have a convention this time round. No wonder! I must have seen like hundreds of them total in just this one mini vacation. Anyway, after the chair lift, we went to subway for lunch and ate it near the gazebo at the edge of the lake in the back of our hotel. That was followed by the inevitable canoe ride that was awaiting us in front of the gazebo. As humans, we are mechanisms made to improve. With that said, we learned our lesson from a previous vacation, in which we brought a camcorder on the canoe. My parents had it and they tipped over. We got a kicker out of that one. Unfortunately, my dad’s wallet didn’t find it funny. We had to buy a new one. So this time, we didn’t bring it with us. We just brought our cheaper cameras and took pictures of each other. Canoeing is awesome. It’s so peaceful and simple. And the lake was placid, hence the name. We had the mountains in the background also. I loved it. We did not tip over! We next had to buy souvenirs for our folks back home. Shopping in the Olympic village was so fun – what with the various stores, my two top favorites of which were Fortunes of Times and Imagination Station – who could not enjoy it. Oh yeah, Steph was interviewed for the NBC broadcast to be aired on Saturday at 7pm, so tune it and share her moment! She just talked about Lake Placid as a vacation resort. An hour or so of shopping got us hungry, so we got our grub on at this Howard Johnson restaurant right next to our hotel. The food entailed various kinds of steaks, soups (clam chowder!) as well as baked bread, mashed potato and yogurt that you can customize with granola bits and raisins. Yummy for my tummy! Back at the hotel, we hit the pool pretty hard. We did quite a few laps, but not in a row. We swam for about an hour then took quick showers before we hit the hay.

Friday morning was even better than Thursday morning. And if you know me, you know that me likes the warm weather. Alexandria Bay and Thousand Island were on the agenda that day and you can say that we put on check mark for both of them. They kind of reminded me of the Olympic village actually because there were so many shops. The thousand Island were cute looking in the water. I counted two thousand and three of them though. Just kidding . . . or am I? We treated ourselves to a ferry ride to visit Boldt Castle. It’s more of a magnificent mansion than a castle, a mansion made of stone that is. The main history of it is that this hotel entrepreneur was able to become so rich that he made a castle for him and his family and it has since become a tourist attraction. With the sights of the day well received and finished, we had dinner and entertainment. As we were heading back to the hotel, we saw on the side of the road, a diner place that served food outside on picnic tables. It was awesome and so country like. We had live entertainment in the form of a band playing old blues songs as well as Beatles songs. We had ribs with tasty BBQ sauce, juicy, sweet corn and coldslaw. We got home and were pretty much too tired to do anything, other than lie down, close our eyes and fall asleep. At least, that’s how I felt.

Saturday morning. With the knowledge that we would be going home that evening, we knew we had to make the best out of that day. We decided to drive to the summit of White Face Mountain, elevation: ~4,800 feet. We parked our car in the parking area and then had to climb up to the real summit. Mommy stayed in the car, the right decision for her condition, because what we had to climb was harder than I thought there’d be. The steps to the summit were boulders with a railing. Yeah, there were some steps, but only in the really steep and rocky areas. The summit though was amazing. I felt so small compared to the panoramic view I got from up there. We saw tree tops on mountain tops and rivers crossing rivers. It was breath-taking, both figuratively and literally (it was mad windy and cold!).

We got home in Commack at around 8 pm and we had dinner. Then Daddy surprised me with a little tennis at a lighted tennis court. My mini vacation was complete.

I feel like I want to write more, but I don’t have much to write right now. I just know that I think for my blog, I’m going to condense my vacation, or should I? I already have it done here. This is becoming a burden! Why do I do this to myself?! What the heck!! This is not the turn I wanted to take. I got to sleep now before I kill myself through writing again. By killing I mean making something fun and relaxing turn into a burden, an unwanted onus on my back.

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