The drive south to our land in Newcomb takes about an hour and a quarter, and goes through some beautiful and empty country...Lake Clear to Tupper Lake to Long Lake to Newcomb to Goodnow Flow...Ben announced that he was going to be astronaut when he grows up, but still plans on living in our backyard...
This is one of the straight shots along the big-empty between Tupper and Long Lake...I love the feeling of the deep wilderness pressing in on both sides...
Ben was feeling a little better, although his nasties have moved into a more traditional stuffed nose and gunky chest mode (which is both disquieting and a bit of a relief as we didn't know what to make of the snotless/feverless cold)...he was excited to be on the road, and for a couple of the key components of our day: eating at the Long Lake Diner (aka "Woods") and playing at the playground in Long Lake...
Our new driveway is in great shape, although with a couple of downed trees...we walked down to the water, and made plans for thinning out the trees like crazy...Ben and I are going to come down here camping when the weather starts to turn cold...
On the way back out and back up towards Long Lake, we stopped at the Newcomb ski-hill, which Ben is newly excited about since becoming an expert at Mount Pisgah last winter...we're getting a seasons pass this winter for the whole family ($300 total...yes... for all of us)...
We also filled up our water bottles at the spring at the bottom of the ski-hill...it's great and cold water...
Ben was insanely happy to get to the Long Lake Diner {WOODS!}...he ordered a grilled ham and cheese, shared my order of sweet potato fries with me, and beamed at everyone in the restaurant...Gail also had an order of the best french onion soup I've ever tried...
Ben originally called it "Woods" because of the wallpaper that runs around the whole restaurant...the other great feature that we love is that the tables all have topo-maps under glass, and we spend time during every meal here looking at and imagining the places in the maps that we look at...Ben learned about maps and topo-lines and map-symbols in Woods, and we learn something new every time we visit...
Our last stop before heading back home was at the great little playground near the Long Lake Central School...Ben loves this playground like no other...we've made trips down here just for lunch and a play before...today was the first time that he scaled the climbing-wall by himself and without any help...he slid and climbed and ran and hung (from some monkey-bars...he still need to gain some confidence along with some upper-body strength before he'll do these solo)...
On the way home, we stopped off at Shaheen's Market for steaks and fish sticks (guess who got which...), along with some other necessities for sustaining life...we all enjoyed some quiet time in the afternoon, and then a great supper...
It was a nearly perfect summer day!
1 comment:
I followed the link on your ZS post and ended up here. Great pictures! Your son looks so much like his mom it's not funny! lol I do like that wilderness feeling that you get up there also!
have a good one.
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