Dippikill

Every year Paul's family rents a cabin in the Adirondacks for a weekend. The whole family gets together to visit, get outside, and just generally be together. We headed up Friday night and met everyone there. And by everyone, I mean everyone (almost--we were missing some key players this year), but there were 12 adults and 6 children. Oh and Moab the dog of course.

Paul, Moab, and I were staying in the bunkhouse which is a large room on one side of the cabin. It has multiple bunkbeds with room for quite a few people to sleep in. The rest of the family was on the other side of the cabin in separate rooms. I figured we would sleep well since it was so quiet on our side. I thought wrong! Moab was so agitated all night that he wouldn't stay still and he wouldn't go to sleep. If we got 4 hours sleep we were lucky. I was a crab apple when I woke up.

Saturday morning we had breakfast and we headed to a Garnet Mine that we'd been to last year. It was a lovely day. Paul and Moab climbed up the rocks to the top to look around. My foot was not going to allow me to do that, so I stuck to the bottom and searched for garnet remnants. I found quite a few pieces. I'm not sure you can do anything with them, but I picked them up all the same. After we got our fill, we all trekked back to the cars and went back to the cabin for lunch.

We spent the afternoon visiting, watching the kids play with squirt guns, reading, basically lazing around. Paul, his uncle Water, and Paul's nephew Gehrig hiked down the pond to paddle in the canoe. I took Moab for a short walk and worked on obedience with him a little bit. I tried to take a short nap, but was unsuccessful.

We had a large meal for dinner and spent more time visiting and then it was time for bed. I thought to put my earplugs in that night and it was much better. Moab was exhausted from the hike and walk and we made sure he didn't nap through the day. That helped keep him quiet that night!

I still felt exhausted when I woke up Sunday morning. We packed up our stuff, cleaned the cabin, and said our good-byes to everyone. We decided to take a different route home to allow us to pass through Old Forge. It's a cute little touristy Adirondack town. We hoped to find a carved wooden bear and while we did see some, we either didn't like them or they were too expensive. Oh well. We did get some candy in the coolest hardware store though! We tried to grab a meal at the pancake house, but it was incredibly crowded and the wait was long. Plus, they wanted us to share a table with other people! I wasn't into that, so we left and started on our way home. Stopped for a meal in Utica and eventually made our way home. Even though it was a relaxing weekend, we were still exhausted from the lack of sleep and the drive. We made homemade pizza for dinner and took it easy the rest of the night.

In the Old Garnet Mine