After our quick visit to Canada, which concluded with a night in Montreal, it was back to the US of A. We jumped on a Greyhound bus, fortunately (as we were fully loaded with our bags) the bus station was a short walk from the hotel. The Greyhound would take us over the boarder, to Burlington, Vermont… the nearest place to Montreal in America that we could find affordable car rental!
With the car in hand, we hit the road through picturesque and autumnal Vermont (no pictures of this unfortunately, but Up State New York didn’t look half bad in autumn either… pictures to follow).
The sun was beginning to dip as we arrived near our first camping spot in NY. We were struggling to find any butane for our camping stove, so we opted for a Swedish fire torch from Lows (the DIY giant) to cook on. The log, which acted similarly to a rocket stove, burnt fast and hot… which made for a challenging yet entertaining cooking experience!
We settled in for the night, ready to explore our new surrounding at Moreau Lake State Park in the morning.
After breakfast the next day, and before we set off for a walk around the nearby wilderness, we noticed that the Park Rangers sold firewood by the bag, an acceptable $7 for a sack… better than the average GAS station deal of five logs for $9!
Our rental car’s numberplate is worth mentioning. It was HAY 666, which could be translated from Spanish as ‘They are 666’ or ‘They are the Devil’. The perfect numberplate to travel through superstitious America approaching Halloween…!
After the lumber excitement we took a quick pause to catchup on some reading / writing. Hatti has been writing a journal to accompany the blog, its handy to refer back to especially if we are writing the blog retrospectively after a WIFI outage.
Rain descended on us the next day, so we scrapped our usual heating up porridge routine in favour of a dry diner than served pancakes… I think we’re hooked! Albany was only an hour away and it was on route to Schodack Island State Park, our next stop! Thinking we were ‘sitting the rain out’, we pulled up at a diner and got stuck in to breakfast!
Walking into the plaza felt like stepping to Kurt Wimmer’s 2002 classic, Equilibrium. Impressive, but somewhat soulless. They had tried to counter the massive expanse of concrete with modern sculpture, yellow blob above, but it was somewhat drowned out.
Unsure exactly what the function of the plaza and surrounding building was, but in desperate need of the toilet… they just keep filling up your coffee cup in diners… we followed a sign that pointed to a door hidden down a short flight of stairs off the plaza. This led us to the behemoth of hidden underground spaces a concourse that linked the Capitol, Library, Towers of Doom and THE EGG. Some 1.25 miles of corridor hidden underneath fountains.
Brutalism-ed out, we walked back to the car and headed on the Schodack Island. The island only recently opened its camping facilities, they were lush, its main function since it was adopted by the Parks and Recreation department was as a day use area for biking, fishing, hunting and cross country skiing. We did none of those things.
Keen to walk off the pancakes, we hit the trails. Boy was there a lot of trail. We aimed for a point mid way down the island, a historic tower, and heaved our mostly pancake bodies through the mist and the rain!
After two hours on the trail we were now significantly soaked, we concluded our walk and headed back to the campsite which we (again) fortunately had to ourselves… and they had fantastic warm showers to warm us up after the walk.
Tomorrow we work our way further South… and find a solution to dry all of our wet gear!
James
Fascinating scenery, both natural and man made. ❤️😃 xx
Interesting. Loved the photos. Excellent!