Lake Placid with Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad came up to visit again this summer. We took it easier this time than last, not running all over the state. The only trip we took was to Lake Placid - possibly one of the only significant places in New York State we DIDN'T visit last year.

Lake Placid has mixed emotional memories for me. The first time I visited was with Nathan two days before he deployed to Afghanistan. It was late March, so the snow had mostly melted. It was also about about 34 degrees and raining. I, of course, was miserable anyway. We stayed only one night, then came home just in time for Nathan to leave. My second visit was last summer when I climbed Mt. Marcy with a group of friends. Even though I really missed Nathan being there with me, I had a wonderful time, including a night spent on Marcy Dam where I saw more stars that I've seen in my whole life - more shooting stars than I'd seen before or have seen since. That will be important in another blog post. For now, this trip with Mom and Dad was my third trip. I was glad to be tipping the scales to more pleasant times.

Mom and Dad really wanted to see the Olympic sites. If there's anybody who doesn't know, Lake Placid has hosted Olympic games twice, once in 1932 and again in 1980. The 1980 Olympics was the "Miracle on Ice" where the US beat the Soviet Union in hockey to win the gold medal. This was the first time in the history of the Olympics we won gold in hockey. But anyway, we went to the Olympic sites.

We took a ski lift to the top of Whiteface Mountain, one of the highest in the Adirondacks. If you can see the tiny white dot just above the center of the frame and to the left of the most right cable, that's the building where the chair lift started. As you can see, it was a very long way up.

This is a view of Lake Placid from the top of Whiteface.

Nathan wasn't too thrilled with having his picture taken.

This is the skating rink where Miracle on Ice happened. History was made. The US rocked the sports world :)

This is the ski jump ramp. You can see how small the door at the bottom is, so this thing is very, very tall.

This is looking down to where the jumpers land. The gray square at the end of the green patch is where the skiers have to stop at the end of their run. I think you'd have to be out of your mind to ever do this.

A view up from the bottom. Again, you'd have to be out of your mind.

This is the new bobsled course. The one from the 1980 Olympics couldn't handle the modern speeds safely, so they built this mile-long track. We walked down it (no riding though ;-) ). 

I think Nathan would win the race, though. Even on foot.

We took a boat tour on Lake Placid, itself. Each of the cabins there (called "camps") costs over 1 million dollars. The money you have to make to afford one of those places was outrageous. The families that own Texas Instruments, Calphalon, and Alpo each have camps.

I was glad to go again in the summer, this time with Nathan with me. Mom and Dad really enjoyed the trip, too. They love to see historic sites and Lake Placid has a nice history to offer. I was also glad to see the sites and check them off my "bucket list" :-) 

St. Lucia Wrap Up (Boy am I terrible at blogging)

I left off with a photographic tour of the Sandals grounds. Very beautiful, but doesn't scratch the surface of St. Lucia. Here are a few quick pictures from our speedboat tour.

Rich people's houses on the side of a mountain overlooking the ocean. Must be nice.

Private beaches.

These mountains are the Pitons. They're considered the most memorable feature of the St. Lucian landscape. They are even reflected in the "double peaks" of the St. Lucian flag. On the left is Petit Piton. On the right is Gros Piton, the taller of the two mountains (it looks shorter in this picture because it's farther away). Petit Piton is a very difficult mountain to climb, and I didn't want to die...so we decided to climb Gros Piton (the day after this boat cruise).

The edge of the tree line marks the beginning of the volcanic valley. We went into the crater for a volcanic ash bath. It makes skin feel silky.

There's still heat coming out of this thing, too. I burned myself in the water where we did the ash bath.

This shoe-shaped rock formation was in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I don't know which one because I'm not very good at pop culture...and I wasn't terribly impressed with the movies.

The day after the speedboat tour, Nathan and I climbed that mountain I mentioned, Gros Piton.

This was on the way up Gros Piton. You can just see the island of St. Vincent off in the distance to the south.

Here you can see the island of Martinique to the north (far off above the horizon). It's amazing how close together all the different Caribbean nations are. It's a good thing they aren't fighting with each other because it seems like you could throw a rock from one island to the next.

Petit Piton looks a whole lot steeper from this view. I was so glad we didn't try to climb it.

This one is for Mom. She's grown this purple plant called Wandering Jew as a house plant for as long as I remember. Here, it grows all over the side of the mountain in huge patches.

Hot and sweaty and gross and exhausted, we made it to the summit! 2438 feet high.

Still sweaty and gross and exhausted, we got a great photo op with the Pitons in the background :)

This, obviously, wasn't on one of our outings, but we celebrated my birthday while we were there. I don't know why the creepers in the back felt the need to smile for our picture, but whatever.



And as a last picture of St. Lucia, here's a beautiful panoramic from the top of Gros Piton looking out to the south.

That's it for St. Lucia! More random updates to come.