Oct 1-5, 2021

This fall, we had plans to revisit Sleeping Bear National Seashore in Michigan.  We went last year, and stayed at the Platte River Campground.  It was beautiful, the lakeshore habitats, dunes vs. forest, and the changing leaves made the trip quite memorable.  This year we had booked a full week in order to spend time in the area; we had wanted to visit the town of Empire and hike the Dune Climb all the way out to the lake.  But we changed our plans about three weeks before our vacation.  We cancelled our week stay and searched for campgrounds in the Adirondack Mountains, in Northeastern NY. We settled on Eighth Lake Campground in the Western Adirondacks.

The Adirondacks are of a gigantic state park. This park could easily be a National Park based on scale and beauty, but the citizens of NY beat the national government to it. New Yorkers cared so much for their land that in the late 19th century worked hard to add the preservation of this park to the state constitution. That means this park has some of the most protection of any park in the world. The Adirondacks are a mountain region in northeastern NY. It is not part of the Appalachians and we do not really know how these mountains formed. We do know that this is one of the few circular regions of mountains, where a bulge rose from the earth to form the landscape. Furthermore the rock that makes up these mountains are a billion years old, some of the oldest exposed rock around.

If you are reading this you probably know that I want to move out west. I want to be in the mountains. However, I have accepted the fact that I will probably be in Ohio for a few more years. This is not terrible as we are very close to the Adirondacks. Although we are just one day’s drive away, we stayed overnight at Evangola State Park on Lake Erie. This is a fun state park and well worth a short visit, especially to check out the nature center. The kids got to explore the center and track a monarch! Follow its journey at www.mwtag.org.

The next day, we drove to Eighth Lake Campground via the I-90 NY Thruway (also known as the most boring stretch of freeway since Nebraska). The campground was rustic but nice, showers were old, but satisfactory. No electric at our sites and no T-mobile. We did have a bar of ATT signal (and full signal at the top of the mountain and in the middle of the lake.)

While in the Adirondacks, we managed to hike 9.2 miles with the whole family (including my 14.5 year old dog, Josie). We had close to 1200 ft elevation gain and were in the backcountry for 5 hours. Now this might not seem impressive to my friends that hike (and thru-hike), but leading 4 kids (ages 6-11) and a senior dog in the changing weather of the Adirondacks – it rained, we had forecasts of a thunderstorm later in the afternoon – WAS an accomplishment. We packed as if we were going to be out all day, and had all necessary emergency supplies, but if there is one thing I want to remember for future hikes, is that for the littlest kids – bring garbage bags as ponchos! I thought of that idea much too late. My older kids had waterproof jackets, but the younger ones were not in shells, but rather all-weather jackets.

While on our trip, we managed a few hours of no rain to canoe Seventh Lake. The campground rents the canoes for $20 a day. The canoes sit 2 adults, but we brought a cushion for the little two and stuck them on the floor. From the center of the lake we could see the top of the mountain we climbed. We also took a drive into Old Forge town which was about 10 miles away. A bit touristy, but fun to finally explore shops on an RV trip.

Our drive home took about 8 hours. Overall, it was well worth a long weekend trip.