You won't find me often waxing lyrical about a Holiday Inn, but here goes:

Ode to the Holiday Inn in Lake Placid

I found you atop a hill
  Oh Holiday Inn
 Offering vistas to South and West
   to hot and weary travelers Your a/c made me delightfully chill
  Oh Holiday Inn
 Your in-room coffee valet was the best
   And even for one so perverse
As I, I could take my fill,
  Oh Holiday Inn,
 of free pens, packaged soap, and the rest
   of your comforts and pleasures.

When I got up this morning, it was raining, and mist flowed between the mountain peaks.

So I canned the idea of going for a run, and did laundry instead. After I'd loaded up the washer, I found the rain had stopped, so I took the camera outside to try to capture the misty conditions in the mountains, but couldn't really do them justice.

Out in the misty morning

It soon started raining again, so I ordered an omelette from room-service, put my feet up, and felt all cozy in my room, reading the New York Times, with the rain beating against the window.

By 11.30 or so, I was ready to leave, finally. My first destination of the day was Whiteface Mountain, as I'd found out that you could drive all the way to the peak, over 4,600 feet above sea-level. When I got to the entrance to the road - I guess I could call it Base Camp :) - I had to decide whether to pay or not. They said that visibility was zero miles. But I decided to chance it, and boy am I glad I did, as it turned out to be one of the highlights of my trip. And since they were forecasting zero visibility (and it was, in any case, Monday morning) I had the entire mountain almost to myself.

During the ascent, there were several rest stops, where you could pull off to get a preview of the view from the top. The mist was near the top of the mountain, so from these rest stops, the views began to spread out far and wide. The large swathes of mist that hid some of the nearby peaks only added to the grandeur of the view. But try as I might, I couldn't capture a photo that did them justice. At one rest-stop, I took a photo, finally, of my trusty steed, Chevrolet Lumina. Shall I write another ode? Perhaps not :)

At the end of the drive, you're still four hundred feet below the summit. Nevertheless, the view was awe inspiring.

View from the parking lot near the peak of Whiteface

To get to the very peak, you can walk through a tunnel and take the elevator!. Walking alone along the dripping, dimly lit, four-hundred foot tunnel, and then waiting for the elevator to descend 300 feet to pick me up while steel chains clinked and deep in the mountain strange metallic gongs sounded intermittently, I felt like I was Fox Mulder in an episode of the "X-Files" This feeling was reinforced by the guy who eventually opened up the elevator doors from within, who was obviously suffering either from claustrophobia or mountain sickness. In a tortured voice, while we ascended alone together, he told me the history of the construction work on Whiteface ("coz most folks - that's what they want to hear"), while staring fixedly at a point midway down my chest.

In a long tunnel near the peak of Whiteface Mountain

I won't even try to describe how it felt to be on the peak of this great mountain. I hope the pictures convey something of it.

Peak of Whiteface, and a sign to prove it

After driving back down the mountain, I wound my way through the quiet, gorgeous State Roads around Lake Placid, back to the big, bad freeway, and set off South. After, about ninety minutes, I pulled off at Chester to get gas, and noticed a sign for Loon Lake. In honor of Katharine Hepburn ("can you hear the loons calling?" - imagine me saying that in a high-pitched, wavering, nasal voice), I stopped by Loon Lake, only to find that it was tiny - the wrong Loon Lake - the real one is further north. Still the deserted beach had an amazingly sexy lifeguard.

The wrong Loon Lake

Later that afternoon, as the rain drizzled down again, I walked down Broadway, in the famous spa and racing town, Saratoga Springs, just to get the feel of the place. It seemed like a lovely little down, possessing beeautiful brick Victorian houses (one with Greek Revival columns - what do you call a house like that?), and amply populated with young college students - my kind of town! I even took the cure at Columbia Spring.

By 6.00, under grey, wuthering skies, I finally arrived in Albany. Driving along the endless strip-mall of Central Avenue, I found myself wondering why Hilary wants to move here. Once downtown, though, and confronted by the massive edifices of government, I was more impressed. Clearly, though, this is still a city in trouble. Almost on the same block as the government buildings, beautiful old Victorian brick buildings and brownstones stood as burnt-out shells.

But the State Education Building took my breath away. It shows how seriously earlier ages took education. It would be laughable hypocrisy to build such a building today.

State Education Building in Albany

I spent some time driving around, seeing the vaunted sights of Lake Street (ho hum) and Washington Park (okay, that IS beautiful), and trying to identify some downtown hotel I could afford. At seven o'clock, I was sitting in the square in front of the Education Building, still consulting my guide book, which only listed hotels near the airport.

The evening gets late and I'm still without a bed in Albany

Finally, I decided "What the hell!" - it's my last "hotel" night - why not treat myself? So I checked into the best hotel in the city. It's comfy, I suppose, but not a patch on the Holiday Inn in Lake Placid. It seems typical of modern, corporate hotels - service to the lowest common denominator. I was charged an outrageous sum, for example, for my chicken caesar salad, so why should I have to toss it myself (they'd just dabbed a few scoops of dressing on top of it without tossing it)?

Anyway, off to bed finally. Today is the last full day of my journey with the car, as I return it in Scranton tomorrow (it's not the end of my vacation, though, by any means - still got another eleven days before flying back!). What a fantastically great drive it's been!