We broke our cardinal rule of no chain food on the trip by having a continental breakfast at the Residence Inn that morning. To make up for it, we ate it at a conference table with four Italian women, three of whom spoke no English. I had the best time listening in on their conversation and trying to decipher the words they were saying. They were extremely personable and happy women, so that made for a great breakfast.
Our next leg of the trip was to cross Lake Champlain on the ferry to get to Lake Placid, New York. Surprisingly, the Burlington ferry had already been shut down for the winter so we drove south and boarded the Charlotte ferry to Essex, NY. In hindsight I’m glad that we took that ferry so we could see lots of beautiful color around Essex, NY.
The streets of Essex were quiet on a foggy October Sunday morning.
Check out this huge pumpkin!!
Cinderella would have been proud.
This guy was one of the Burlington ferry boat operators who was just as surprised as we were that it was shut down for the winter. He took it in stride, though, and walked home with his boots on his oars thrown over his shoulder.
New York proved to be MUCH more colorful than Vermont. It was just GORGEOUS!
Jeremy humored me by letting me turn around in the middle of the road to go back and snap photos of this pretty cemetery. What a place to spend eternity, huh?
Along the way we stopped at the Cedar Run Bakery and Cafe in Keene for lunch where I had an amazing salad. Next door to the bakery was an antique store called Adirondack Reflections where we witnessed something that we are still laughing about to this day. This woman and man who CLEARLY were not from the area came in and started looking around. They were dripping with money and seemed like they might be from New York City. Imagine Margo and Todd from A Christmas Story. Very Yuppieish. We watched them proceed to take this HUGE deer mount down from the wall and try to drag it over to the cash register. Finally the shop owner jumped up to help them. As they were paying for it we overheard the man ask, “Now just what all is involved in the upkeep on one of these guys?”
I looked at J and said, “In the South we just put our lips together and blow the dust off!”
And then we nearly fell out laughing in the store.
I’m sure there is more involved in that to keeping a mount look good, but it was just hilarious watching these two people drag this deer around and then ask how to upkeep it like it was a pet.
Or we might have been a little punchy by this point of the trip.
But as we got higher in Adirondacks we started seeing more snow!
So of course we stopped to admire the view.
My gloveless husband threw a few snowballs.
I thought for a minute he might smack me with one. Uh oh.
But he aimed high and right and hit the car instead.
I did have the keys in my pocket after all.
After that little pit stop we headed on up the mountain in search of moose!
It wasn’t long before we arrived in Lake Placid, which reminded me a little bit of Gatlinburg with a lake. And an Olympic village.
Except I can’t remember seeing a random bobsled on the sidewalk in Gatlinburg.
Or random ski jumps peeking over the trees.
We enjoyed looking through the shops in downtown Lake Placid and bought a few treasures along the way. We had another great dinner at The Cottages at Mirror Lake Inn where there was a firepit outside over looking the lake. It was simply beautiful. After dinner we snuggled up and enjoyed our Marriott fireplace.
Unfortunately the next day was the last day of our trip. We took a leisurely pace from Lake Placid down to Albany, NY to catch our flight home.
The scenery along the way was just beautiful.
I made J turn around for one more waterfall on the side of the road…
We got to Albany around lunchtime so we had some time to kill. Once again I googled “Restaurant Albany” and chose the most high rated one.
That happened to be the Pump Station.
If you ever need to taste the best hamburger in America just swing by this joint. It was EXCELLENT. And it had some interesting architecture.
After lunch we wandered around downtown Albany and took in the sights. Jeremy found the Quaker Oatmeal man.
Pretty sexy, huh?
Then he asked me if this was from Saved By The Bell. Silly boy.
This statue was very beautiful.
Until you look up and realize he’s giving her a Wet Willy.
HA!
So there you go. Our New England anniversary trip ended almost as soon as it began it seems. It went by way too fast. Which reminds me… I need to go get my entry into the HGTV dream house today so I can win it and visit this neck of the woods anytime that I’d like. It really is one of my favorite places in the whole world. I am very glad I got to share this trip with my husband this time.
Happy (belated) sixth anniversary, babe!
Click any of these links to read more about our vacation!
Day One
Day Two
Day Three & Four

you guys look like you know how to have fun! thanks for sharing.
Loved this post – Lake Placid has always seemed like such a fantasy place to me, being down here in Texas – just seems like a place I will never make it to see – yet I feel like I have been here after reading this!
The Halloween girl in my LOVES that you took a picture of a tombstone, and it makes me want to get to work carving one just like it!
One last thing – I’m DYING to know how you formatted the COMMENT button at the bottom of your post, so that people in Google reader will have one click access to leaving you a comment. That is always the one thing I HATE about Google reader, is how difficult it is to pop out quick comments to people, and BOOM, you have figured it out! I am digging around in my template now, but can’t figure it out. If you have a sec, could you clue me in? Thanks!! Dawn
VirtualDavis- sure, you may use the photo! Just please link it back here to my blog. Thanks for asking. 🙂
PS- if you’re looking for more of my pics of Lake Champlain and VT/ NH there are a LOT more I took on this other trip: http://unskinnyboppy.blogspot.com/2008/10/vermont-vacation-day-1-weston.html 🙂
[…] the Picker Sisters jizz in their pants. And then their were some things that would have made the Margo and Todd couple that we saw on our Lake Placid vacation pass out on the […]