Day 7

Montréal

This morning the tent was still soaked from last night’s rain. We tried to get all the water, pine needles, and dirt off before we stuffed it into its bag, which is not a pleasant thing to do first thing in the morning.

Once we packed everything up, took showers, and cleaned up, we walked to the beach via a trail through the woods. It was a small beach that was being cleaned for the day’s visitors by girls going around picking up trash. There were many trees near the beach, but a forest could not develop with the amount of people walking through the area.

We walked back to camp and started for Montréal. We took Route 640 to Route 15, the Autoroute des Laurentides, which heads southeast into the city. It was morning rush-hour so we encountered a bit of traffic on our way. Picked up Route 40, Autoroute Metroploitaine, then got off on some street that looked like it would take us into the central part of the city.

We ended up parking next to a park again, I think it was Lafontaine Park. There was a row of cars parked inside a line of cones, I don’t know if it was legal, but we had no problems.

We started walking toward the center of town. I didn’t know what there was to see, but I think Sergio had a few things in mind. We walked along a primarily residential street with a separated miniature street for bicycles between the road and the sidewalk. First time I’d seen something like this. There are separate street signs and lane lines for this mini bike road. We had a small map of downtown in the tourist guide we picked up. So far we hadn’t made the map yet, the park where we left the car was not on the map which made me worry a bit.

Soon, though, we came upon Saint-Louis Square, which is in the top corner of our map. We continued walking around downtown past the many shops, restaurants, and the few skyscrapers of Montréal. We ended up walking into a closed-off part of a busy street. The Montréal Jazz Festival was underway and there were people everywhere. There was a lot of security and they searched Sergio’s bag, perhaps they thought we were going to blow up the Jazz Festival or something.

We went into a church that is sandwiched between the modern office buildings of today. It is a very old church, although I don’t remember when it was built, but it’s probably at least 100 years old, possibly more. Inside, there were many visitors and there was this guy going around making conversation with everyone, telling us about the history and future of the church.

It was trying to rain, some sprinkles were beginning to come down. Within ten minutes we were standing under an overhang of one of those grand old department stores watching the pouring rain. It was getting crowded fast as we watched people get wet running through the pouring rain. We waited quite a bit for the rain to let up. Once it did we kept on walking around the downtown area but we didn’t get too far before it began to pour again. This time, we were next to the World Trade Center of Montréal.

We sat outside the complex for a while, but the rain was not letting up, so we ventured in and found a section of stores and restaurants, like a mini mall. We sat on a bench and waited it out. We had eaten some of the snacks that were left in the car while we were driving in, not exactly a meal but something to give us a little energy in the morning. By now, the restaurants were very tempting, but to tell you the truth, I really didn’t feel like dealing with the foreign language or currency, so I figured I’d wait to get some food.

Eventually we left, and, although it was still lightly raining, we made our way back to the car. Stopped in another church, they were playing the organ and the rumbling could be heard and felt outside on the street. By the time we got back to the car we probably will have walked about 4 or 5 kilometers.

We rested a bit in the park next to the car, it was very pretty with a lake and a lot of green everywhere. Once we got going, we followed the signs to the Pont Jacques Cartier Bridge, which passes over the Parc des Iles, a recreation park with a casino, amusement park, and a geodesic dome encompassing a biosphere.

Back to the States

Once over the bridge, we headed south on Route 15 for the border—Montréal is only about 40 miles from the New York State border. The terrain is very flat and there was a front coming through. We were driving through the frontal boundary and, while Sergio was driving, I saw four funnel clouds. I made him pull over on the side of the road to see for himself. They looked like a tube coming down from the cloud deck tapering to a point at the bottom. They swirled around and around. All the ones we saw died out after a few minutes, but by this time they had grown quite long. This was the first time I’d seen anything resembling a tornado and for Sergio, who was hoping to see a tornado while in the States, this would probably be as good as it gets as far as tornadoes are concerned.

Finally we made it to the border and encountered the typically bitchy US Customs officer. Back in the ol’ US. No more trouble talking to people or buying things. Christ, I’ve been out of the country for a few days and I’m missing it already.

Dannemora

We were so close to the famed Dannemora, New York, that I had to stop and see what this place is like, take some pictures for my grandmother who did some of her growing up here about 70 years ago. She wants to go back so badly that I thought perhaps some pictures might quench her thirst.

Canadian Route 15 turns into I-87 in New York, and we stayed south on this until Plattsburgh and NY 3. We did not go into Plattsburgh but it probably would be a nice city, being on Lake Champlain. We drove west on NY 3 until NY 374 which goes to Dannemora. This is a very rural area with miles between the small towns. Dannemora is a decent-sized town with much of its population working in the Clinton Correctional Facility. This, in Grandma’s eyes, is the world renown Dannemora Prison, where riots occur every other week and stories of heroism and tragedy still prevail (only family members will see the humor here).

We parked the car and, with camera in hand, walked “the main drag.” The main drag is short, consisting of the jail on one side with its high, white, fortress walls, complete with guard towers and all. After the walls, which are about five feet from the street, there are other prison facilities like the greenhouse and administration buildings.

I walked around looking for old buildings that may have been here in the 1920s. One was a small house that is used by the prison now. I was on the sidewalk taking aim with the camera when a guy in a pickup truck rushed up and got out asking me what I was taking a picture of and why. I told him what I was doing and he said that I couldn’t take pictures on state property. If I wanted to cross the street and take one from the gas station I could do that, but not on state property. This didn’t seem to make much sense to me, but we walked across the street and took the picture and watched our step from now on.

I also took a shot of the Dannemora Town Hall, a tiny box of a building that houses the local government, the library, the town court, and the town nursery school. Took a few more shots of some select buildings and left. There is a lot of what looks like 30s or 40s era construction in the town. There was one crowd of people outside a local bar where some guy was talking to a group of people from atop his tractor that was parked on the sidewalk.

Adirondack Park

We left Dannemora and headed back to NY 3, which would take us farther into the Adirondack Park, the largest state park in the country. The boundaries of the park are basically a large circle, about 140 miles by 120 miles. The farther we drove into the park, the fewer people there were and the more mountains and lakes appear around each bend.

We stayed on NY 3 through Saranac Lake and past Santa’s Workshop in North Pole, New York, a somewhat gross roadside amusement. In the town of Tupper Lake, we picked up NY 30 south. We decided to take this road to its end, very close to the Pennsylvania state line. However, we wouldn’t make it that far today.

We stopped somewhere and ate dinner in an Italian restaurant, but I don’t remember which town or what the name of the place was. The food was good and that’s all that mattered, although I think we were a bit underdressed for the place.

The towns are very far apart now ,and they are much more oriented towards tourists with a lot of hotels, cabins, and boat rentals. They were doing the oddest construction on this road. There would be a small section of road that was unpaved and had a lot of holes and ruts because of all the rain, then the pavement would begin again and for a mile or two and it would be fine, but then another unpaved section, just long enough that if we didn’t slow down the car would have probably fallen apart.

It was beginning to get dark because of the overcast skies. The clouds were very low, hovering above the lakes and mountain tops. It looked like it could begin raining at any moment. We kept passing campsites that were marked in the atlas. Eventually, we stopped at Lewey Lake which is 12 miles south of Indian Lake, New York and 12 miles north of Speculator, New York.

We chose a site that looked level and set up camp, we weren’t too picky at this point. All the sites on the lake were, of course, taken. The only problem with our site was that there was no grass. Just dry mud since I guess it had rained here a lot in the last day or two. With our payment of 12 bucks, we also received the “How to protect yourself from Lyme disease” and the “Black Bears and Public Campgrounds” pamphlets.

Once we set up camp, we walked (only about 100 feet) to the lake’s edge. We stood there and watched the water, clouds, and a family of ducks swimming around us. The air was still and it was very quiet. The clouds were down below the level of the mountains and we watched them move in front of the tree-covered hills. It was going to rain very soon.

We walked back because it was sprinkling a little and it had been a long day and we both wanted to get in the tent and lie down for a bit. It was too early to go to sleep so we talked a bit and, in an hour or so, we were ready for some sleep. Before morning, it would rain hard while we would remain dry and warm, however, everything had that soggy feeling.