Hemlock Hall, September 6, 2007

We had another sumptuous breakfast, then packed up
and said our goodbyes. What a lovely two days we
had. We drove a back road through the woods to
Old Forge, at Jim's suggestion. It was a pretty
route and we were not in a hurry so enjoyed it
very much. We visited the Old Forge Country Store/
Hardware store. Robert bought a Mass. Delorme
map, one of the few still missing in our collection.
Old Forge is much like Estes Park, Colorado. A
town built for tourists. I suppose it had other
forms of income in the past, logging certainly,
but now mostly tourists.

We stopped just west of Cazenovia, NY in Pompey
Hollow to visit our friends Walt and Trudy Moore.
Trudy was in town when we arrived, unannounced,
but Walt was home. We had fun catching up on
the last four years with Walt and Trudy arrived
after a while and then another friend of Trudy's
with whom Trudy used to play tennis. They
both coached at the local high school for a while.
We stayed a couple of hours and went on our
way. Trudy was, clearly, glad to see us and thanked
us for stopping and apologized that our visit had
to be so short and that next week hadn't worked
out for us to have a longer visit. But, perhaps the
two hours was enough.

We went on to Seneca Falls where we spent the
night.

The Adirondacks

September 5, 2007

Yesterday we drove from Whitby, Ontario to Hemlock
Hall near (on) Blue Mountain Lake, just east of the town
of the same name. Ann and Jim Owens had just
returned from a day of kayaking. We brought in our
stuff and sat around and talked until dinner.

Hemlock Hall is located in the heart of the Adirondack
mountains. It's a beautiful spot set in the woods,
but also close to the lake.

Dinner was a sumptious affair with too much food,
seating was family style and seats are assigned with
eight people to a table. We sat with Jim and Ann
and 2 couples from Albany. The setting is informal
and the conversation quite lively.

This morning we got a late start. Breakfast is
served between 8:30 and 9. Again we
found our selves seated with interesting
people. I can understand why Jim and
Ann return year after year.

After breakfast we walked to Castle Rock.
It is a 2 1/2 mile walk, but there is a good
deal of rock scrambling at the end of the
trail to get up to the top of the rock. It was more
than I had bargained for. There were several places
where you had to climb steeply (almost straight
up) through the rocks. Unlike the west where you
climb up canyons and over rocks, these rocks were
covered with interwoven roots of trees. The dirt had
been worn away by many feet. To me the roots
made it much more difficult although there were
times when they made good hand holds. I imagine
if the rocks were wet what is left of the dirt on them
would make them very slippery and you would be
happy for the roots as foot holds.
Ann and Jim Owens with Robert on Castle Rock
(43:52.302 74:26.941 1863) Location of
Castle Rock .

The top, or Castle, a knob, was worth the climb.
The view of the lake and surrounding mountains
was spectacular. We should have carried our
lunch, as it turned out. It took us much longer
than anticipated to make it to the top and
lunch would have been a welcome treat. I had
thrown 4 apples into my pack so we ate those
and we all had water.

Whitley, Ontario, Canada

We had a long day of it, but we are hoping tomorrow will
shorter. We are just east of Toronto.

We left our motel this morning at 9 AM and arrived here
at 10:45 PM. We had assumed that, this being Monday
the traffic coming down the freeway to Toronto wouldn't
be too bad. It was Labor Day here, too and all of Toronto'
was coming home. They did keep moving though. Robert
said he was going slightly above the speed limit and people
were passing him, but all kept moving.

We went through customs with no problems. They asked
a couple of questions and let us go before Robert had
time to ask "which ID do you want?" TG for that.

On to the Adirondacks in the morning and then we stay
put for a couple of days.

Marquette, MI

We left Jeanne's about noon today and drove here.
We are in a motel just west of Marquette, Michigan.

We stopped once a long the way to walk along the
St. Croix river. It was a beautiful day and is a
beautiful river. We didn't walk far, but enjoyed
the little walk and remembering the time we
canoed on the river a number of years ago.

Tomorrow we enter Canada. We have our
passports and hope all goes well. We'll
be overnight somewhere in Ontario tomorrow.

Minneapolis, MN

Yesterday we checked out the distance and time to get to the
Adirondacks. We discovered that although it is only about
1200 miles it would take us more than 20 hours to get there.
That has made us change our plans so that we'll be leaving
Minneapolis this afternoon instead of tomorrow. We'll try
and make it to Marquette, MI today. That will cut 400 miles
off the rest of the trip.

We've had a good visit. Jeanne and I have had lots of time to
talk. I've not seen as much of Rochelle as I would have liked,
but she is busy and doing well.

Robert, Jeanne and I have had some good walks which helps
keep the pounds off. It is hard not to gain weight when
traveling.

Last evening we had a lovely meal with Ford and
Cindy and a tour of their labs at the University. Ford
showed Robert Labjack which he found of interest
and might be able to use with his solar project.