Sunday, August 7th, 2005: Escape From the Great Escape

Adirondacks:
We had been planning to use our Great Escape tickets on Sunday, but the previous day's perfect weather and congenial surroundings had brought us to our senses: a _huge_ number of people were going to be at the Great Escape on a day like this, standing in interminable lines in the sun waiting for rides. (I was able to confirm this afterwards, since my fellow MapInfo office-dweller Jennifer Tadros had taken her family there the day before.) Even Isabel was intermittently persuaded to agree that we were much better off right where we were.

I started the day relatively early, removing Calvin from the tranquil scene (Isabel, Sarah, and Ed all asleep in various corners of the cabin) before he could tweak any noses or let out too many piercing screams. We went first to the site of the previous evening's bonfire, and piled up the various unburned ends of logs and planks into a couple of piles, to finish the cleanup.

It was still too early to disturb the sleepers at the cabin -- so we took the car out to Johnsburg Market, which had opened shortly before we arrived. Calvin had gone back to sleep (the ride out Crane Mountain Road is apparently quite soporific) but I bought breakfast supplies -- eggs, milk, bacon, juice -- and dropped in at Pearsalls to see if anything exciting was happening there. Luckily my Crane Mountaineer seventh sense (sensitive to incipient food preparation) had not failed me, and peach pancakes were just coming into existence, fresh off the griddle. Calvin woke up just in time to have a pancake, with plenty of maple syrup; perhaps this seventh sense is inheritable as well as infallible...

Eventually we returned to Putnam Farm to deliver our own breakfast offerings, which were reasonably well received. And since the rest of my day was largely taken up with cooking and eating said breakfast, wrestling with the support logs for the new 12x17 deck, taking a nap with Calvin, and driving back to Albany, it's probably better if Sarah tells the rest of the story.