How was your summer? Mine was trying. The weather, home repairs, self-health repairs, etc. … put my wife and me in a gray mood. It came over us so gradually that we didn’t even realize it. But given the obvious reality of our fun-less season, I did aspire to arrange a convalescent getaway. As soon as it was possible, I got online and booked a trip.
Many decades ago, I was born in upstate New York. I spent the first few years of my life there, and thanks to summer visits throughout my teens, I solidified some fond memories of the area that included Albany, the Catskills, and Lake George.
Lake George was beautiful, as I recalled it. It’s nestled in the Adirondack Mountains, with a shoreline that’s refreshingly bereft of any kitschy tourist attractions or housing overdevelopment. The forested mountain landscape descends unbroken to the shoreline on most of its 80-plus-mile waterfront.
In my teens, when I’d last visited, I enjoyed racing down to the water, swimming out beyond the people, and taking in the mountain views while floating on my back. It was heaven. Of course, the sunbathers that I’d skied sand upon during my headlong dash didn’t care for my enthusiastic run; but it was a momentary displeasure. They realized that at that spot on the beach, the sand was burnt-sole hot if you stood on it for too long.
Because of those recollections, Lake George was my destination for our recent getaway. It’s a big lake, and we stayed at a nice resort — the Sagamore — that I’d never visited but had heard a lot about. It’s technically on an island, but it is connected by a short bridge/causeway to the mainland. The scenery did not disappoint as we drove along the lakeshore road. My memories had been confirmed, and I knew we were in for a good time.
The weather was great, but for one day out of six, when it rained cats and dogs. But as random chance would have it, the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour was a mere 42 minutes away by car, up the lakeshore road in Ticonderoga. A getaway within a getaway. What are the odds that this Trekkie would find such an attraction so close by? Hard to believe it wasn’t planned, isn’t it? 😉
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and came back with many pictures. The ticket-taker was all kinds of impressed with my Cord Devlin series about a Trek-obsessed NSA agent.
As we were leaving the Sagamore, we realized that our outlook had changed for the better. The change of environment was exactly what the doctor ordered, and our moods went from gray, to a kind of yellow, and finally a sunshiny blue-and-white, to match the clear skies.
The moral of the story is that it’s a healthy thing to shake up one’s humdrum routine from time to time. A trip to someplace new reminds you that there’s more out there than what you perceive through your narrow window on the world. My wife and I used to embrace that philosophy in our many travels. It’s high time we re-embraced it. The restorative benefits of getting a new perspective by traveling cannot be underestimated.
The End
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