The Adirondacks are beautiful.  There are 2,759 lakes and more than 30,000 miles of brooks, streams and rivers.  However, life here has changed a lot through the years with much of the wild game having been hunted out.  The last moose was killed here in 1861 but they have since begun to recover, thanks to strict hunting laws.  The last beaver was trapped in 1880 but they are coming back, too.  Fortunately, in 1885, the State of New York permanently banned logging in the public lands, too.  There are 6 million acres in the park - larger than the state of Massachusetts!  However, only 2.4 million are publicly owned.  There are 46 mountains in the Adirondacks that are over 4,000 feet tall.  Seventy MILLION people live within a day’s drive of the park and there are many, many villages and cottages within its borders.

At the hamlet of Blue Mountain Lake, we turned west on Highway 28 to begin our return trip to our campground.  We wish to note here that New York has great roads - much better than any other northern state or province we’ve been in to date.  We passed many lakes on our way, including Utowana Lake, Raquette Lake, Eighth Lake, Seventh Lake, Fifth Lake, Fourth Lake, and White Lake.  We traveled through a number of hamlets, as they are called here, including Old Forge which was a pretty little working town.  We saw lots of restaurants, outfitters, doo-dad shops (as Jerry calls gift shops), taverns, and inns along our route today but, since the tourist season is over, there were no crowds or traffic jams.  We saw a number of deer today along with a roadrunner.  We passed by a tavern called the Stumble Inn on Highway 28 on the way back to the campground - thought that was a pretty clever name.

God smiled on us today.  Rain showers were predicted but they didn’t begin until we were back in Bubba, safe and sound, warm and toasty, for the night.  When we awoke the next morning, it was still raining so we decided to lay low and take care of some personal business such as balancing the checkbook and working on the blog.

The low for the night was predicted to be 33.  However, when we awoke Friday morning, our outdoor thermometer read 22 and there was a heavy frost!  The rain that had puddled on top of our slide-out covers had frozen and came crashing down with a thud when we pulled the slides in to leave.  It was brrrrrrrrrrr-cold.  Even though Bubba’s heater and our trusty electric blanket had kept us warm through the night, we decided it was time to head south so it’s off to the Pennsylvania Poconos.