Nelson and I enjoyed a lovely excursion to the Adirondacks on Sunday and Monday. We launched our canoe in Lower Saranac Lake, paddled up the Saranac River, and camped on Norway Island in Middle Saranac Lake. That would be the fourth island from the right in this map:
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It was a bit nippy (the forecast was for a low of 20 degrees F, but I don’t know how low it actually got), but quite preferable to the heat of summer, in my opinion. Another advantage to canoeing in the fall is that there are far fewer people crowding the lakes. There is no way, for example, that we could have gotten an island all to ourselves in the summer on this lake without making a reservation months in advance. Now we didn’t make a reservation at all — we just paddled around and picked what struck our fancy. So more fall canoeing in my future, I think.
The coolest part of the trip was going through the hand-operated locks on the Saranac River:
Here’s our island:
And this time the leech only made it into the canoe rather than between my toes:
Alan Schmierer