Lake Placid, New York

Zola and her parents spent the Memorial Day weekend at Lake Placid, New York. It was loads of fun. Here are the highlights of the trip.


The nice lady working at the Greentown, PA Subway shop said about Zola "Hers has blueberry eyes." I don't really know what to say about that.



Lake Placid is a charming little town in upstate New York. And I mean upstate - almost to Canadia. (not a typo)


Zola's first hotel room - the Swiss Acres Inn. Don't be fooled by the Oakleyesque decor. This place was bad news. Our neighbors were loud, the shower water came out brown, and the TV made a strange Poltergeisty sound all night (yes, it was turned off). Luckily, we managed to score better accommodations the next night.



As you can see, Zola was much happier with her upgraded accommodations at the Lake Placid Hilton.


The town of Lake Placid is near the lake, but there's another lake, more accessible, called Mirror Lake that lies next to Main Street. Here's Mirror Lake. This was the view from our hotel room balcony. The lake is 2.65 miles in circumference. We know this because we ran it.


Dirk was in conference meetings for a lot of the time, so Jana and Zola got to know the town.





We got half a round of miniature golf in before Zola demanded her dinner.


Kathi and Jana are a pretty tough putt-putt golfing team.


Lake Placid is most famous for hosting the 1932 and 1980 Olympics. We got to take a little tour of Lake Placid's Winter Olympic Museum .





One of the most famous hockey games in US history was played at Lake Placid. In the 1980 Olympic Games, the United States team defeated a heavily favored Soviet Union team in "The Miracle On Ice."



Here's Zola in the arena where the game was played. She's unimpressed.



Here's Zola in the Penalty Box. She got a 5 minute major for pooping her diaper.


Jana spent some angry time in the box as well.


Zola liked the bobsled.


After spending so much time at Mirror Lake, we decided we needed to get to know the other lake, the actual "lake" part of Lake Placid a little better. So, we strapped up and headed out on a little hike. It's only a few hundred yards away from town, but it was very peaceful . . . placid, if you will.

Here's (almost) the whole gang: John, Dirk, Jana, Zola, Kathi, and Chad. We missed you, Matt and the Twietmeyers.




Some of you may have heard of the 1999 B-movie called "Lake Placid," where a giant crocodile terrorizes people on a lake. We brought this movie along and watched it in our hotel room to set the mood. Unfortunately, the movie is set in a remote part of Maine - not this charming New York town. A line of the movie's dialogue explains it: "

 What's with the water? It's so black.
 There's no waves or anything.
 Well, they wanted to call it ''Lake Placid,''
 but some body said that name was taken.
 It's too bad. 

It was a little bit of a disappointment, in the end, that we weren't in danger of being eaten by a large crocodile . . . or were we?



[That water was COLD!!!]

At the end of the day, Zola was pretty tired. She was a trooper, though, and we're very glad we were able to take this little trip all together.