Adirondacks- a wet night

5/26

We arrived in the Adirondacks with the trip odometer 870 miles. Our entrance into the mountains was the biggest change in scenery that we had experienced on the trip, and we were ready for it after a long and cold ride through Canada. The weather warmed up, the roads emptied, and the woods closed in around the now curvy highways; all these things combined equals ideal motorcycle riding. I quickly learned that ideal motorcycle riding does not mix with traffic laws. Kyle and I were cruising around a bend when an oncoming police car appeared and flicked on his lights. I immediately thought that we were going to sacrifice our food budget for the first month, but the officer must have been in a good mood because he turned off his lights and kept on going. We were both overjoyed in our good fortune, but hope we haven’t wasted all our luck in the first national park.

Just up the road, we passed a sign with small font, but the words “trout fishing” burned brightly. I hit the brakes and pulled a U-turn. Kyle, who had seen the sign too didn’t need much to interpret my non-verbal communication. Five, maybe ten minutes later, I had a fly on my rod and I was wading into the roadside stream. Kyle was gracious enough to allow me to fish while he endured the biting black flies that were all over the river. I hooked one, but failed to land, so we moved on.

Shortly after, we passed through Lake Placid, a quaint mountain town and home to the several Winter Games. With fish still on the brain we stopped at a fly shop and got the official report on what the fish were biting. After a few hours of fishing the West Au Sable, we parked our bikes and hiked up to the peak of Mt. Jo in the dark. We tried to ignore the bear warnings that were posted periodically along the trail.

When we reached the summit we were greeted by the High Peaks surrounding us in the moonlight. Mt. Jo was rocky, but we found a relatively flat slab on which we laid our pads and bags. After cooking up a hot meal of rice, we hit the sack for what we hoped would be a peaceful night.





In case you didn’t get to see the videos… At about 2:30am, I woke to drops of rain hitting my face. I looked over at Kyle who had made the disappointing realization as well. The rain was light, but we had a decision to make: Pack up and head down the mountain looking for shelter or set up the rain fly. Under the sleep spell, we chose the later and stayed decently dry through the morning when we found a break in the rain to pack up and start our decent.