After planning the menu for the week and going shopping, we drove to Lake Placid and beyond to Wilmington Notch State Park and set up our base camp for the first part of the week. We cooked dinner and relaxed or explored a little before bed.
On Mondau we had a good breakfast and drove over to Pitchoff Mountain for some rock climbing. We spent the better part of the day climbing on the 60 -70 foot wall. Then we returned to camp to get our swimsuits. Some of the group went down to check out the big waterfall on the Ausable River just behind the campground. We then went to the public swim beach in Wilmington for a while before retrning to camp for dinner and a campfire.
On Tuesday we ate a good breakfast and drove over to Keene Valley to hike up Noonmark Mountain (elev3556 ft). I turned out to be a hot day and the trail got pretty steep as we got closer to the top. The view was wonderful in all diections and enough of a breeze was blowing at the top that we took the time to fly a kite. Overall, it was a good, strenuous hike and I think that everyone was a little tired at the end of the day. We arrived back at camp for showers and then drove into Saranac Lake to find that the Chinese Buffet was closed for some reason so we drove back to lake placid and at at a Pizza/Italian restaurant right next to the gazebo where a live band was playing. We returned to camp and went to bed since we were getting up early in the morning.
On Wednesday, we packed up camp, went shopping for additional food to last till the end of the week and drove to Little Tupper Lake for our overnight canoeing trip. We loaded all our gear into the canoes and paddled west down the lake with a gentle breeze blowing against us until we found a great spot with good rocks for fishing from. We moved in and set up camp, using one of the canoes as a table in our kitchen area. Immediately after set up, most of the boys were out fishing. Quickly I heard the yell "I got one!" and we went to check it out. It was a big one. It turned out that fishing was good over the couple of days we were there. The day ended with a beautiful sunset.
On Thursday morning some of the boys were up early and fishing again. We made breakfast and took off to check out a large bay, an island and up a creek the fed the lake. Partway up the creek we came across a beaver dam that we had to get over. It was pretty high and took some effort to get over without tipping but everyone did great. Harry was looking for Pitcher Plants to show everyone but had no luck. After paddling a little farther up the creek it got really shallow and choked with plants so we turned around and paddled back down the creek, over the beaver dam and back to camp, checking out other campsites and doing some trolling for fish along the way. We had a good dinner, caught some more fish, had a campfire with smores and had another pretty sunset before bed.
It got colder Thursday night and when we woke on Friday morning it was so foggy that you couldn't see the lake. That didn't stop some of the boys from doing a little more fishing before breakfast. After we ate, we packed up cam and paddled back to the boat launch, loaded the trailer and turned towards home. the fog had cleared up and it was another beautiful day. There was a very competitive race to see who would get to the beach first.It was a great race with only about 4 feet separating the canoes at the finish.We made a stop for lunch and ice cream at a Stewarts Shop before driving the rest of the way home.
