Happy Thanksgiving

We had a very nice dinner at The View restaurant at Mirror Lake Inn in Lake Placid.  This was our second year of going out for Thanksgiving, a tradition we hope to continue.

Back from New Jersey

We drove south last Monday and spent a busy week doing house stuff.  Tuesday we were in PA and went through the 100+ year old house our daughter is hoping to buy.  Then we stayed with our other daughter in NJ and shopped for things for the house.  I think we have finally decided on appliances and on a color for the bedroom walls.  The latter involved opening the storage unit and looking at the colors alongside the quilt that goes on the bed.  And we think we finally found a color for the shades in that room also.  We had the nice lady at the post office put our new address in the database so we will be able to forward mail to it when the time comes.  We stopped at the marvelous Monroe Township library.  I can tell we will be spending a lot of time there.  Too bad the roads aren't wide enough for bike riding; it is only 3 miles away.  We found some lights we liked at the lighting store.  Etc.  And then on Friday, we had our initial house walk-through.  Not all the electrical was done and none of the plumbing because they arranged the walk-through for us to coincide with our driving south with the Volt, which we had to take out of the North Country before we get too much snow.  But everything seems fine.  There were a couple of surprises, though.  I hadn't realized that there is no door between  the uninsulated storage over the garage and the mechanical room.  We are checking to be sure the interior walls of the mechanical room will be well-insulated.  And the air conditioner condensers are in the middle of the back wall of the house instead of under the bedroom windows.  That is a better placement, but it meant we had to redo the landscape plan and patio.  So we met with the landscaper on Saturday and are awaiting the new drawing.  We drove back home yesterday and are now trying to get used to the cold.  It was minus 1.5 degrees when we woke up this morning.

Lunch and a Hike

We had lunch today at the St Regis Cafe at Paul Smiths.  Then we had a very nice hike around Black Pond off Keese Mills Road.  We'll have to see if the cafe is open for a Wednesday evening buffet before we move back to NJ.

Hiking to the Hudson River

We joined a group from the Adirondack Mountain Club on a 5-mile round trip hike from North Woods Club Road in Minerva to the Hudson River, opposite the blue ledge cliffs.

House Progress

But it won't be finished until sometime in January.  Sigh.