Olympic Venues, Lake Placid

Today we returned to Lake Placid and toured some Olympic venues. Lake Placid hosted the third winter Olympic games in 1932 and the 13th winter Olympic games in 1980. The Olympic Sports Complex hosts the skating events and is near downtown. We toured the Olympic museum there, which had a number of very interesting exhibits. One exhibit had a continuous, uncut televised showing of the 1980 USA vs. USSR men's hockey match aka "The Miracle On Ice". We didn't watch the whole match. Later we toured the Olympic Jumping Complex. We rode the elevator to the top of the 120 meter jump, which had thrilling views of the countryside around Lake Placid. We also watched future Olympic hopefuls honing their skills at freestyle jumping. The skiers would slide down a plastic coated ramp, launch off the end, do flips and twists, and land in a swimming pool. It was very entertaining.

When we returned to our campground, the weekend crowd had departed and the place was nearly empty. There were only about eight sites occupied in the 54 site campground. That's one of the good things about camping during the week. It's slack time. Another good thing about being able to stay at the same place for a good while is that you get to know the people running the place. Mike here is a great guy, and climbs a mountain almost every day before work. One of his first duties each morning is to clean out the fire pits. He has been bringing us abandoned firewood from other sites. We don't even have to pilfer it ourselves! We have had a fire every night that we wanted one, and will leave with more wood than we came with. Cool! The only camper who has been here longer than us is Ron. Ron has been camping at Wilmington Notch Campground almost continuously for two years. He says he wants to die here. Technically there is a 14 day limit, but they usually do not enforce the limit except during peak periods. They asked Ron to leave during the busy 4th of July and Labor Day weekends, but he returned shortly thereafter. He will have to leave when the campground closes for the season next month, but will likely be back when it reopens in the spring. Ron wins the contest for the most frequent camper points.

I keep a log of when and where we have stayed in the motor home. Tonight I summed things up: On September 30, the year is 3/4 gone, and we have been in the motorhome for 107 nights this year so far. It will be about three weeks until we get home, and we have some other trips planned before the end of the year, so that number will rise. Additionally, we have spent at least 45 nights in a tent this year: backpacking on the Chatooga in Georgia, canoing the Withlacoochee River (north) in Florida, biking the KATY in Missouri, canoing the Current and Jack's Fork in Missouri, backpacking the "Bob" in Montana and canoing the BWCAW in Minnesota. I think we have earned some serious frequent camper points ourselves!