Thursday morning we were up early – this is still a habit for me. During the night, a nice Prevost coach pulling a trailer parked at the Lowes. I wish I had taken a picture of it. It was a real beauty. We hit the road around 7:30 and drove RT3 into the Adirondacks. This is a great road – very scenic and the smoothest pavement of the entire trip with not much traffic.

We stopped in the village of Cranberry Lake for breakfast then continued on through Tupper Lake, Saranac Lake and into Lake Placid. Lake Placid is a village with a population of about 5,000 people. For such a small village it has an astounding vibe and history.

Lake Placid hosted the winter Olympic games twice – in 1932 and again in 1980. Donna worked at 1980 games parking cars on Mount Van Hoevenburg. Another interesting factoid about the 1980 Olympic games – the Lake Placid Middle/High school was issued a liquor license and served as a bar during the games. It’s the only high school in the USA to be issued a liquor license!

We’re staying at the Lake Placid fire station RV park. The fire station is manned by three full time fire fighters and a volunteer crew. One of volunteers, Bob, runs the RV park (which is a New York state licensed RV park). The spaces are bit cramped but all of them have full hook ups with 50 amp service. We have the only pull through site so we didn’t have to drop our trailer. We also have a view of Mill Pond from our front door!

Getting into the fire station was an adventure. I turned on to Mill Pond Road, but I should have driven another 50 feet and pulled in to the fire station entrance. Once I committed to Mill Pond Road, I had no choice but to follow it into the village center. This involved a couple of narrow streets and tight turns. The Iron Man triathlon is being held here this weekend and the village was bustling with pre-race activities. We remained calm and made our way through it all and back to fire station without any drama.

The Iron Man triathlon has been held here every year since 1999. It’s the second oldest official Iron Man event in North America. We have a friend from Michigan, Allen Hutchinson, competing this weekend in the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bicycle and 26.2-mile run. The race takes place on Sunday but there have been athletes up here training for weeks. We’ll try to hook up with Allen and his wife, Crystal in the days ahead.

We had lunch in town at the Chair6 restaurant with our friends Alec and Susan Friedman. Susan is an author/speaker Donna met in a book club when she lived here back in 2000 – 2002. Alec is the rabbi at the synagogue here.

Donna’s sister, Pam and her husband Gene joined us later at the fire station. We grilled pork tenderloins and ate at the picnic table. Entertainment was provided by the fire crew. They were training for fire department competition. This was fun to watch and something new to me. Gene was a former volunteer fire fighter here and he explained the activity to us. The fire crews compete against other departments in various timed events. Some of the events involve a drag race type start with special race vehicles quickly accelerating to 60 mph with fire crewmen standing on a platform on the rear. The vehicle then skids to a stop as the crew jumps off, sets a ladder and one of them climbs a tower to complete the course. This type of competition is great training for the fire crew as the events they compete in simulate many of the firefighting skills they need.

We had a very full day and look forward to more fun-filled activities throughout the weekend.

View of Mill Pond from our doorstep

Lunch served at Chair6

Lake Placid FD pump truck

LPFD competition truck

LPFD Roush powered race car

Crew aboard race car

Setting ladder amid tire smoke

Climbing up to the tower