The Adirondacks Part 1: Lake Durant, Sawyer Mt. & Buttermilk Falls ~ this anomal life.

Hello again. On the weekend of August 24, 2013, we were supposed to go to Killbear Provincial Park for our second camping trip of the summer. Since we've been there before numerous times, on a last-minute spur I looked around on Google maps for other possible destinations instead. I specifically looked around in New York state because I've seen some blog posts about how beautiful upstate NY can be. That's where I found the Adirondack Park. As soon as I saw the pictures of the mountains, I was hooked--I had to go there.

The campsite we chose, Lake Durant, was six hours away which was not bad at all for us.

The Adirondack Park is 6.1 million hectares. It contains over 100 peaks with the highest peak being Mount Marcy at 5344 ft (source: Wikipedia).

This was the lake our campsite was located by. I chose this because the reviews say that it was peaceful.

This was the view from campsite 12--our campsite. Quite nice, but a little swampy. The peak you see at the back is Blue Mountain but it was covered by the trees.

Since we were crossing the border, we couldn't bring a lot of fresh foods. We bought sausages and Zatarain's Jambalaya Pasta mix and cooked that instead. It was pretty good.

The sunset was beautiful on the first night.

The sky is a little purple because my "eBay" GND filters have a magenta tinge to it and I couldn't take it out. Nevertheless, I still like this shot.

The stars weren't as great as I thought they would be. I think there was also some light pollution on the horizon.

Boy, were the nights COLD. I couldn't sleep very well and that's why I captured this shot from the back of our campsite at 6 a.m. Quite beautiful but the trees were in the way.

I walked to the beach and soon after the sun disappears behind the fog.

Everything was just white and foggy but it was still picturesque.

It was quite a nice morning. This was bridge that connected the front entrance to the rest of the campsites.

I don't thikn I'm supposed to take pictures of strangers' cars but it made a nice contrast to the forest green.

Not sure what these flowers are but they look like mini-orchids.

Sawyer Mountain is apparently one of the "easiest" peak trails in the park. It's approximately 2.2 miles long. Note my use of quotation marks around easiest.

There were a lot of mushrooms on the trail.

The trail was pretty much one big incline lined with roots, mud, and rocks.

It was not easy for us.

Twisted roots line the trail.

This was the end of the trail--partial views of some peaks. Not the greatest to be honest--didn't seem to be worth the walk.

After the hike we took a snack break. This pistachio-vanilla twist soft ice cream was from Custard's. It was the best soft-serve I've ever had. Only $3.75 too.

We couldn't find a picnic area to cook water for the bowl noodles so we stopped at a rest area on the side of the road. That would be the first time we cooked on the side of the road...

Tada~

I must say that it was the perfect place to have lunch. The lake was picturesque and peaceful.

After lunch we headed to the Whiteface Mountains to see the High Peaks. The pictures from that leg of the trip will be in Part 2--it was an unforgettable part of the trip!

Back at the campsite, we are often frequented by ducks. I'm used to seeing chipmunks come by but not ducks. It was probably because other visitors fed them but we didn't feed them.

I didn't think he would catch anything but he caught a small bass.

It was quite cloudy on the second day but we decided to go to Buttermilk Falls anyways. There's barely any hiking involved and the waterfall was quite nice.

I jumped around on some rocks to get the composition I wanted. However, I couldn't take very long exposures since it was still too bright--but we make do right?

I don't have a shutter release remote so I had to click on the 10s shutter and then tread rocks to get in the picture. I should invest in a shutter remote.