Km 5,293 - Lake Placid, New York

We are now in upstate New York in the beautiful Adirondack region and starting to feel like we've covered some distance. Last Friday, we decided to slow things down a bit and we spent he weekend near Lake Traverse, Michigan located on the shores of Lake Michigan. We spent our free day touring the area. We only touched a small portion of the area (it is one of the bigger tourism areas in the state), but we did some amazing stuff. We spent the afternoon on a sandy beach on Lake Michigan. We've been to some great beaches and this ranks right up there. It's weird to think that beach culture can exist this far from the ocean, but these lakes are so immense that they might as well be oceans. We spent significant time in the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes National Park. This is really quite a phenomenal place with astounding lookouts over Lake Michigan.

From Northern Michigan, we spent a big day driving back to Canada (via Port Huron-Sarnia border crossing). We did stop in Frankenmuth, a little Bavarian town north of Flint. After we got our fill of glockenspiels and lederhosen, we continued down an incredibly poor highway with a remarkable amount of roadkill and into Ontario. Only highlight of southern Ontario was passing through Brantford, home of Wayne Gretzky. We pulled into Stoney Creek (part of the greater Hamilton Area) in the midst of a rain storm at 5pm. We spent the night with Norm and Zoria, relatives of Melissa's and continued back into the US. On the way to Niagara Falls, we drove by Lake Ontario. This made 4 great lakes in 3 days. We crossed into New York State by way of the Rainbow Bridge border crossing overlooking the stunning Niagara Falls. This gave us a chance to catch a glimpse of the falls without dealing with the parking nightmare that we experienced 2 years ago when we were there.

Once in New York, we spent 5 hours on a toll interstate. Do not do this. You see nothing. We were very happy once we got off this near the southern end of the Adirondack region. We spent yesterday (Tuesday) at the Six Flags amusement park in Lake George. It may be aimed at kids, but the roller coasters were a blast. We finished the day up by pulling into a little campground outside of Lake Placid. We decided to stay 2 nights to kind of slow things down after several long days of driving. We did a nice little hike to a fantastic lookout over the lakes region. Tomorrow, we will pack up with the intent of leaving New York, passing through Vermont, and ending in New Hampshire. It sounds like a big day, but it is only 400 Km. From there, it is only a day or two away from passing into Canada and the Maritimes.