August 17, 2016
I love having visitors and showing them around the wonderful region of Saranac Lake, my favorite place in the adirondacks, usa. So I was excited to have my friends Katie and Erica come up for a recent girls weekend. They're super fun people and we always have a good time together, and I knew this weekend would be no different.
TGIF shenanigans
When they showed up on Friday evening, everyone was pretty peckish, so we went straight to dinner. We decided to try out Bitters and Bones, a new-ish place that just completely rebuilt their kitchen to add a bunch of new equipment and bulk up its food capabilities. So we wanted to check out the new menu!
Bitters had already made a place in my heart with their delicious and interesting cocktails. But the new menu has a wide variety of options, and we were quite pleased with each of our meals. I loved my wings, but I wished I had gotten some sort of side with them, because the sauce had a decent amount of kick to it!
After dinner, I wanted to give them a taste of the local nightlife, so we headed up the hill and stopped in to the Waterhole and Grizle T's for a few drinkies. We landed at Griz for a while, throwing back a Blue Light or two and providing color commentary for the Parade of Nations, part of the opening ceremonies for this summer's Olympics.
And we closed out the evening with a time-honored Saranac Lake tradition: getting way too much food from Borracho Taco to bring home and slam before hitting the hay. There's nothing like a huge burrito or some nachos before bed to make you feel better in the morning.
Culture on a Saturday morning
On Saturday morning, I decided we needed a little culture, so we visited the Saranac Laboratory Museum. There we learned all about the history of E.L. Trudeau and his tuberculosis research, and how it was so important to the development of Saranac Lake as an Adirondack population center. And I caught a cool Pokemon outside.
Then we wandered over to the farmers market. I love going there even if I don't need to pick anything up, because it has such a great atmosphere. It's right on the shores of Lake Flower, and most of the town stops in each week, so you'll always run into people you know and catch up. And you can usually meet a few new people, too!
Then it was time to take it easy. Our plan was to go for a leisurely float down the Saranac River.
Float on
We put our bathing suits on, picked up some food and drinks for the trip, and borrowed some inner tubes from a friend of mine. Then we took off to drop Katie's car off where we planned to get out. We were originally thinking about floating to the bus garage in Bloomingdale, but when we stopped there, there was no river to be seen — it was almost completely dried up. So we moved it much farther in.
Then we drove to the Dorsey Street parking lot behind the town hall and we set off from the dock in Dorsey Park.
The river flowed slowly, and we laid back and enjoyed ourselves.
As we meandered through town, people walking on the bridges, dining on the porch at the Left Bank Cafe, and fishing on the banks of the river all called out to us asking us how far we were going and exclaming how it looked like fun.
It was a really gorgeous day, and we enjoyed the sun beaming down on us.
As we approached the edge of the village, we passed under the train bridge and Pine Street bridge, and the water started moving faster. We braced ourselves and raised our bodies up as far out of the water as possible as we hit a quick section of rapids. The cooler got loose from Erica, but she managed to retrieve it quickly, though our bag of Doritos got soaked. But the rapids were definitely exhilarating.
After that, we moseyed on down the river much more slowly, but we were in a less populated area, so we could yell and be silly and not have to worry about people hearing us.
We also managed to make some new friends. No, we didn't run into other people floating on the river that day. Instead, we met a mama duck with a trail of ducklings who were hungry for the soggy Doritos that we were still carrying, but seemed to be losing one or two here and there.
The ducks followed us for quite a lot longer than we expected them to. They trailed after us at a distance at points, then they'd come back in close again to see what we were up to.
Eventually we got to our take-out point, but the river got really shallow in places, and we were glad that we brought a paddle with us to shove off when we got stuck.
Recharging
After all that, we needed to take a little break. So we grabbed a pizza from Little Italy and headed to my place to change, eat, and relax a bit.
We spent a while watching silly videos on YouTube, but then we got restless and headed into town for a bit. Our plan was to hit up karaoke at Romano's, but when we got out of the car we heard the strains of a band at the Rusty Nail. We investigated and found that my friend Eric's band, Scarsdale Vibe, were finishing up a set.
Once that was done, we traipsed across the street to Romano's. We had intentions of singing karaoke (we had been warming up our vocals all afternoon by singing really loudly on the river), but we coudln't think of a single good song to do.
Before we could think of anything, a wedding party came in and took over the karaoke line, so we gave up and headed home to watch Stepbrothers, which is one of the best movies of our generation, in case you didn't know.
Beach day
On Sunday, Erica took off to head home before I managed to pull myself out of bed. But Katie stuck around for a while, and we wanted to just hang out in the gorgeous sun. So we went to Lake Clear Beach with a tapestry and some towels, and we sprawled out on the sand to soak up the rays.
Even after Katie had to head out of town, I stayed at the beach and took a little nap. I was tired out from the weekend of fun! But I can't wait until we have our next Adirondacks girls weekend — there's so much more to do!
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