Paddling the Flow

We spent the morning circumnavigating the Flow.  I found rose pogonia orchids for the first time here.




And LOTS of sundew.


We also saw an osprey and a loon with a chick.

Paddling Indian Lake

We had another beautiful, but windy, day today.  We joined our friends for a paddle on Indian Lake.  The paddle was shortened due to high winds, so we only paddled 5 miles, but given the effort required it may as well have been 10 miles.  We paddled down the eastern shore to Norman's Cove where we took a break from the wind, which had been at our backs.  Then we struggled across the lake to the more protected shore to make our way back to our friends' camp.  We had a nice visit over snacks so it was worth the trip, but I'm not sure I will paddle there again if the winds are forecast to be over 10 mph.

Trip to Vermont

We drove to Essex Junction, Vermont for the Vermont Quilt Festival.  We only spent a couple of hours there, but the drive and ferry ride are nice so it was worth the trip.  The weather again was very nice.  One note for the future, our car GPS had a bug that inserted an extra half hour into the trip.  I'm glad I knew roughly where I was going so I didn't blindly follow it.

Summer Solstice Celebration

The Northwoods chapter of ADK held a BBQ in celebration of the summer solstice today.  It was at campsite #62 on Second Pond.  Since we had to use the boats to get to the campsite, we put in at the boat launch a couple of hours early so we could do some paddling first.  There were lots of motor boats heading into Lower Saranac Lake from the launch, so we headed the other direction down the Saranac River toward the locks.




We also explored quite a way down Cold Brook until downed trees blocked our way.


We paddled about 5.5 miles before returning to the picnic.  The weather was fantastic, with enough wind to keep away the bugs.

Another Beautiful Adirondack Day

We did an interesting explore today.  We drove 4.8 miles down the road in Massawepie, as directed by the entry for the Massawepie Mire hike on the Tupper Lake webpage, turned right, drove another 0.2 mile and parked on the right near the gate to the old railroad grade.  That is the beginning of a 5-mile trail through various habitats, primarily the huge bog, though there are more trees at that end of the bog than where we were a couple of weeks ago.  The trail looked pretty good near the beginning, so took the bikes off the car and started off.


Unfortunately, what the trail description did not tell us was that in many places the railroad ties are still in place.


We rode a bit further, trying to ride along the side, which was too wet in places.


After only about a mile we gave up, parked the bikes along the trail, and started walking, not that walking along unevenly spaced railroad ties is much fun either.  About one and a half miles from the beginning we reached the bridge across the Grass River.


The trail after that was greatly improved with no ties and not too soft for bikes.  And the bunchberry plants (Cornus canadensis) were prolific in spots.


We only walked about another quarter mile before turning around.  From the satellite view in google maps it looks as though you should be able to enter the trail from the other end off Route 3, near Grass River Flow.  We will explore that another day.

Paddling Forked Lake

We drove back north from NJ yesterday. Today, we had a great paddle on Forked Lake.  The weather was fantastic and there weren't many bugs.

We put in at the campground and paddled along the south shore and down the Raquette River until we encountered too many rocks to proceed.  Then we came back out of the river and headed west to the end of the carry from Raquette Lake where we ate lunch on the dock.  Then some of us continued west to the end of the lake and headed up the Brandreth Lake outlet.

We weren't able to go very far, not due to beavers - the water was still quite deep - but because some folks stayed at the dock and since this was an ADK paddle, we felt we needed to go back to join them.  But I'd love to go back and see how far up the outlet one can paddle.  By the time we returned to our cars we had paddled a total of 14 miles!!

In New Jersey

We drove back to New Jersey on Thursday to spend about 10 days in doctor's appointments and various other activities.  This afternoon we went to the final RBCMS concert of the season.  It was a larger group than usual performing - 10 instrumentalists from Frisson.  I really enjoyed the larger group, especially since woodwinds are my favorite.  They played

• Mozart - Quartet in F Major for oboe and strings
• Bohuslav Martinu - Nonet No 2 (1959) - a really neat piece
• Schubert - Octet in F major

After the concert we went to Temple Gourmet restaurant in downtown Red Bank.  It was very good.