Date: 2008-07-25
From: Long Lake Village

To: No where!
Miles today: 0.0

What a glorious day in town today! Ironically it did not rain for a moment today! (It did pour yesterday afternoon/evening and that made us REALLY glad of our decision to come to town! So, I realize I left a lot out yesterday. It was sort of a hellacious day, really. First, we walked to Lake Durant Campground (which we think we stayed at for one night a million years ago before our first-ever backpacking trip). Then we learned that there was nothing at this campground to help us. It was pouring when we got there and we spoke to some of the park workers and they assured us that there was no such thing as a taxi in these parts. We were a 3 mile road walk from Blue Mountain Village, which the park guy told us was ¢just a dot on the map, really.¢ Thanks. 3 miles did not sound too bad until we reached the road and mac trucks, motorcycles and hundreds of dark blue and black SUVs sped by on the wet roads. We were terrified! Ugh. We just hadn¢t thought about that part. I guess I was thinking people drove slow on country roads¢¦.or didn¢t think about it. After contemplating hitch-hiking (briefly trying and failing at it), checking to see if we had cell service (we didn¢t and who would we call anyway?) we stumbled upon a red ¢marked trail across the highway that said it was going to ¢Blue Mountain lake¢. GREAT! *We¢re* going to Blue Mountain Lake, too! Lets check out our map¢¦.for some reason the trail was not on our map! After much contemplation we decided to follow it anyway, as it seemed to mostly parallel the road, and after all we were headed for its supposed destination. It continued to pour and we were not happy campers. I swear we walked 2 miles in 20 minutes. Then the trail veered off to the highway again. Hmm¢¦. Should we continue or go on the road? We figured out our whereabouts using our map and one road sign. And, we saw a sign for kayak rental and set off with the idea that kayak outfitters might offer shuttle service. As we walked along the road it suddenly poured even harder and for the first time we were truly cold and miserable and had no tree-canopy to ease the walking-in-the-rain. This sucks, was all I could think. Then we got to a motel with a ¢no vacancy¢ sign. The only motel in the village, apparently. Within moments of stepping onto the property, in search of what I am not sure, we struck up conversation with three members of the 25-person family who had rented out the whole place for the week. Next thing you know we were in their car with motel towels wrapped around us! We entertained them with stories of our hiking as they drove us the 11 miles to Long Lake Village!!!!!!! Whoo-hoo!!!! Meeting them was without a doubt one of the highlights of our trip! THANK YOU!We got dropped off at the post office to pick up our resupply box and within an hour or so we were settled into a motel. Whew!Now, back to today - A perfect day:No alarm, 10:30 brekkie at the diner, 12:30 walk from diner to Laundromat in our Long Lake outfits, dirty camping clothes in our newly purchased Long Lake string bags, stop at Hoss¢ on the way, discover that they do not sell memory cards for our camera, 1:00 take turns going to Stewarts to use the pay phone while doing laundry, 2:30 contemplate eating ice cream for lunch,3:00 drop off clothes at motel and head to town beach, 3:15 have brief panic that Turtle has a tic and lime¢s disease. Get info about the one local doctor and get reassured by the guy who works the waterplane that it doesn¢t look like it. 4:00 Buy a knish and an espresso-frappacino thing from the shack by the beach (neither was very tasty), 6:00 swing by motel and then back out to the Long Lake Hotel for dinner ¢ AGAIN! Tonight¢s pasta (me) and fish (turtle) was good but last night¢s pizza was better. The salads were again to die for. 8:00 visit the beach at our motel.9:00 we¢re off to bed (a late night!) ¢¦