Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Our plan is to leave Canada around 16:00hrs on Wednesday, October 29th and head South towards Rochester, NY and spend the night at the service station in Scottsdale, NY. We got held up and inspected at customs mostly because of the large quantity of supplies, food, and equipment we were bringing over. After a brief search of our gear, we were let go without any problems. We arrived in Scottsdale, NY at 19:28 and relaxed and went to bed early to be prepared for the next day.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
We awoke early and did a quick circle check of the truck and hit the road to get to our first destination, Mount Hope Cemetery, in Rochester, NY.
Arriving around 09:40, we stopped at the florist across from Mt. Hope Cemetery and purchased a rose which I will lay at the gravesite of one of the slave girls, owned by the Rochester Family in the 1800’s. She was so loved by the family that she was allowed the “privilege” of being laid to rest in the family plot with a tombstone errily inscribed “We called her Anna”.
After driving around the cemeteries large 5km area, meandering through Lords, Lady’s, Dames, and soldiers of the Civil war, Spanish American War, and of course 1st and Second World Wars, we arrived at Anna’s grave to see someone had previously adorned it with a beautiful purple and yellow lei. We spent some time in the older section of the cemetery and came across a lost Leatherman Wave tool, which had been there for quite some time as it had some rust spots on it. I retrieved it and put it in our pack as it may be a valuable tool for the future.
Before leaving the cemetery, Tori wanted to visit the graves of Captain Thomas BOYD and Sergeant Michael PARKER, two soldiers who were captured, tortured and killed by the Indians in 1779. When doing so, we came across a lady in a gold Impala who said that she was here to remember her daughter who was murdered in 1995 and buried closeby. We felt really bad for the lady as her daughter was murdered.
12:30 We left Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester and hit the I-90 to the I-81 towards Lake Placid, NY. A nice, 6hr drive. Sadly, the temperature dropped from +8C to -5C during the drive towards Lake Placid. Snow soon appeared along the roadways and in the forests that lined the highway.
18:00 After a relaxing and beautiful drive through some breathtaking snow covered vistas, we ended up just outside Lake Placid, at the Adirondack Loj. We took some time to admire the stars, listen to the total silence of the hills and talk to some of the people staying at the lodge (spelled loj). We returned to our truck, unrolled our sleeping bags and prepared for a 2nd night of sleeping in the truck. The outside Temperature was -10C. Thankfully we have cold weather down-filled sleeping bags. I spent some time with my red-lens LED lamp and completed my journal before heading to bed early again, to get an early start on the summit of Mount Marcy on Halloween.
We awoke relatively early at 09:00hrs and checked our gear, suited up and made our way to the base camp of Mt. Marcy.
We made our way to the trailhead and signed the logbook and made our way into the beautiful pine forests covered in snow. It was so quiet here. The backdrop of the towering mountains poking through the trees at every turn was quite an amasing sight.
Sadly an hour or so into the trip, Tori’s pack began to trouble her as it was very heavy with all the extra winter gear and somewhat ill fitting. She started to require several rest breaks per 1/2hr and we decided it was best to abort the hike, and try for Mount Marcy during summer with a better fitting, lighter pack.
We returned to the Adirondack Mountain Club Lodge to relax, warm up and decided since the area was very snow covered and we were hardly prepared for continuing in this manner to head back to Canada and cross at Kingston. There were several sights of interest in the Peterborough area we could check out.
Around 13:30 we decided to Head out from the Adirondack Loj and return to Canada
13:40 We observed a moment of silence and reflection as it was exactly 7 days since Lupis died.
17:00 Kingston, Canada. We got a thorough inspection from Canada Customs. Before the inspection the customs agent asked me “Any hunting knives, folding knives or needles in your gear?” I responded “yes” she said “which one?” I responded “all of the above” which led to a few more questions and about ½ of Customs Canada rummaging through our personal items invading our privacy.
18:43 We passed 1,000 driven km on our trip.
19:30 Arrivng at Ferris Provincial Park, we entered through the gates and the park was completely empty. We slipped into Campsite number 2 located at 44 17.20N by 77 47.42W for the evening, set-up camp and relaxed to spend Samhain in a deserted provincial park. It was a beautiful setting, lots of stars and a surprising amount of desolation. We could hear some traffic off in the distance, but in this modern world, it’s sadly too common. Tori and I relaxed after setting up the tent for the evening and paid homage to the creator for allowing us to be so desolate and warm this Samhain eve. We were supposed to be at the base of Mt. Marcy tonight, but were still happy as at least we were warm.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
We woke fairly early to the sound of several chipmunks inspecting our campsite, hooting, chirping, and clicking. We had some freeze-dried eggs and bacon at the campsite, packed the camp and decided to head out of Ferris Provincial Park towards Peterborough to visit a place we have read about called Petroglyph Provincial Park. Unfortunately the park was closed in the 2nd week of October for the year when we arrived around 11:45.
We decided at this point to enjoy the sights of the Trent Severn Waterway and the head for home. We ended up picking up a hitchhiker who we took all the way to Oshawa with us as we were headed that way in our big Suburban anyway.
Arriving home around 15:00hrs we had clocked almost 2,000km on our truck and had a great time doing a big loop around Lake Ontario and visited some places we really want to go back to.
