Camping in the Adirondacks

We had a lot of fun in the Adirondacks over Memorial Day Weekend. Although, things could have gone a bit smoother...

When we first got to the campground we realized that it had been raining and we did not pack the tarp--fail. Then while we were attempting to set up the tent it started to pour! We had to finish putting the tent up in the pouring rain or it would have filled with water so we got soaked--fail.
While it was raining though we got to enjoy a few rounds of car Yahtzee.
And luckily the rest of the weekend the rain wasn't too bad--it mostly rained while we were sleeping and surprisingly our tent held up well without any tarps.

We had planned on hiking about 10-15 miles on the Northville-Lake Placid Trail--it's a 133 mile trail that travels throughout the Adirondacks. On our first attempt to find the trail head we were unsuccessful. We followed the signs to a dead end road and then there were signs everywhere that it was private property. We were really confused and not sure where the trail began so we drove about a mile down the road to another trail head--fail. We got our CamelBak's on and headed down the trail, only to find that about a quarter of a mile in the trail was completely flooded. It was probably covered in about 2 feet of water and there was no way to get around. We had to head back to the car and set out for our third back up plan--fail.

We had driven by a trail head sign for Panther Mtn. just outside of our campsite so we decided to check that out. We knew it was going to be a short hike, but at this point we figured a short hike was better than no hike. The trail was actually pretty challenging--it was like climbing up a steep, slick, riverbed. We had to climb over a lot of debris and fallen trees and at some points we weren't sure we were still on the trail, but when we got to the top it was all worth it.
We could see the lake that we were camping on as well as a couple of other lakes.
We had lunch up on the rocks and hung out for about an hour before making the journey back down the mountain. Because our hike ended up being so short we decided to drive around and explore the Lake Piseco area, as well as the town of Speculator and Lake Pleasant.

Our last day in the Adirondacks we got up early, packed up camp and hit the road before 10:00am. We knew we wanted to go up and check out the Lake Placid area, mostly because the 1980 Winter Olympics were held there. It was about a 2 hour drive through some really beautiful scenery and when we arrived we were very glad we'd made the journey.

The town of Lake Placid is a very cute little downtown area. We ended up doing a wine tasting and walking around a bunch of shops as well as grabbing lunch at the Lake Placid Brewery. It was pretty cool to see all of the memorabilia/remnants of the Winter Olympics.
Overall it was a great camping trip and a great weekend. We're hoping to be able to go backpacking for a night in July.