Friday morning at about 9am, I picked up Ben's friend Brennan and we headed north to Plattsburgh...the boys played with toys and listened to Brennan's MP3 player in the back...
We played in the McDonald's Playplace for almost 2 hours, and the boys took a quick break for some lunch before heading over to the movie theater...
We went to see, "Race to Witch Mountain", which was a blast!
After the movie we did a quick shop at Petsmart, got some treats for the dogs (even Brennan's), and then headed home...
This morning, Ben and I headed over to Paula's Airport Cafe, at the nearby Lake Clear Airport, to meet our friend George for breakfast...we had a nice time and George handed off an Apple Ipod Touch, one of about 15 which Apple are letting some teachers in my district (myself included) play with for a while...I suspect their trying to get me hooked, but in the meantime, it's fun...
Ben and I spent much of the day geocaching, which was nice given the perfect Adirondack weather...about 10 degrees when we got up this morning, and about 50 by this afternoon...blue skies in all directions and lots of sun...
Ben gave me this cagey look when he had spotted our first geocache of the day, and was certain that I had not...
Our second cache of the day was next to Lower Saranac Lake, and the whole time that we were hunting for the hidden container, the lake was groaning and cracking and shifting, so Ben asked if it was safe to walk out on...I've seen trucks parked on the lakes by their owners' fishing shacks, so I felt confident that Ben and I would be safe...
He was, as always, a big help while looking for the geocaches as well as while homing in on them while using the GPS receiver...
By our fourth geocache of the day, we were in the groove, getting used to the outdoors, and starting to get hungry...
So we stopped in at Ben's favorite McDonald's, in Lake Placid...his spot, and he's always annoyed if someone else is in it, is a benchseat in front of a fireplace...we got lucky today, and we shared a lunch of chicken nuggets and fish sandwiches...food of the geocaching gods!
Our final geocache of the day was all the way down in Wilmington, past Whiteface, along the West Branch of the Ausable River...it was gorgeous, with huge chunks of ice both floating and stranded...we walked about a mile in the woods, with the sound of the river never leaving us...we saw lots of great prints in the snow, crossed semi-treacherous ice-fields, forded frozen streams, and found the treasure in the end...
It was hidden up and away from the river by a few hundred yards, in a pretty hollow filled with big trees and glacial erratics, and piles of deer poop every few feet...
On the way back, we had to cross a frozen over stream at a wide and rushing and scary point...ok, we didn't have to cross there, but we wanted to...it was a challenge, and one which we were equal to...
This is the victory picture...you can still see the residual traces of fear and/or stress in both of our faces...we had crossed the fearsome stream and stayed dry...nature, see our opposable thumbs and tremble!!!
This is the "bridge" that we used to cross the stream...it may not look too daunting from the safety of your living room, but in 30 degree weather, with a half-mile or so back to the car, you don't want to get soaked...we sang songs after the crossing...songs of brave men and insufficient obstacles...
When we were most of the way back to the car, we paused to rest a minute while Ben check out stuff in this brook sharing our path...the grass up to his left is an overgrown beaver dam that runs for about 200 yards, you can see an old lodge in the background, and Whiteface in the distance...It was a great day of caching, and then we got home, took it easy, and played with the Ipod Touch for awhile after dinner...no plans yet for tomorrow...
J
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