Tooling about town

I thought I'd head out to the Adirondacks today. I have never been up in the park. It was nice and sunny when I left at 7am, and it only poured for 5 or 10 minutes at a time once I got up there. It was a beautiful drive over to the park. I decided not to take the interstate, so I went the back way through all the little towns. Almost every town I went through was having some sort of summer festival, and most of the way along rte 20 there were garage sales. I must say... it was a good day for siteseeing, but a bad day for my stomach, my bladder, and my car's stomach. Food (of the vegetarian kind), bathrooms, and gas stations were few and far between. Actually, I had chips and a kitkat for lunch.

I did not know what to expect from the Adirondack Mountains. I guess I always compare everything to the Smoky Mountains, and really nothing compares. Between the tourist spectacle and the georgeous mountains, it is hard to measure up to the Smokies. Don't get me wrong... the Rockies and the Cascades out west are beautiful, but in a different way. I guess the Smokies will always just feel like home... like a comfortable pillow. The Adirondacks would be an awesome place to boat and kyak, but not much on surface tourism. The NY State Park system has the market on the views and cool hang out places along the lakes. at $7 a pop, it takes dedication to stop and look. Outside of the parks, the views are few and far between. And there is almost no where to pull off and just enjoy the area. I did alot of the stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures thing. Speaking of lakes... I can't even count how many lakes there were. After awhile they stopped naming them, and there was Eighth Lake, Sixth Lake, etc.

On the way back to Skaneateles, I came a different way, and I ran across Tug Hill. The guys at work snowmobile up there, and they always told me about the windmills up there. They said there was hundreds of them, and you could get right up to them. Well I stumbled across them. It was AWESOME!!! I snaked around off the main road, onto gravel, then dirt roads (yea for the SUV!) and found a batch of them. Apparently Tug Hill has close to 400 feet of snow a year. It is sort of an anomily, there is naturally lots of wind. There are several farms and dairys up there. The first time I stopped and got out, I was knocked back against the car. It was WINDY! I had a hard time getting my mind around what I was seeing. They were all over the ridge. Apparently they had been building more of the windmills since the guys had been up there in the winter... there were more than a couple of hundred. I counted 185 of them, and then lost count. I saw several dozen under construction. It was similar to cell tower construction. I spent alot of time up there just driving around on the dirt roads and gawking at them. Oh... and the view was pretty. Whatever.

I could see a storm over in the distance... the sky was really black down towards the south. I got on I-81 over next to Lake Ontario to head down to Syracuse. After I got on the highway I heard on the radio that a tornado had just come through Syracuse and was heading south - opposite of where I was. Whew... I dodged another one! I unfortunately did not miss some wicked rain. I was driving... errr... floating down interstate missing my sweet, safe, excellent rain driving car.

And I put 600+ miles on the car today.

The heat has been pretty intense here. And it is weird/scary to see the weather channel saying the humidity is 99%. I really like the 15% we have in Portland.

Paul and I had to change our plans to go to Chicago tomorrow to spend a few days at the office there. He said I could go by myself, but I was happy to bow out. I am READY to go home. I miss James, the dogs, and Mom and Dad.