We awoke to find ourselves in a beautiful campsite on the shore of Fish Creek Pond in the Adirondack mountains in New York. There was absolutely no wind, and the view out over the mirror-calm lake was incredible. We ate breakfast down by the shore, and watched some smoke plumes start to appear on the other side of the lake as other campers lit morning fires. The shower block for this campground is closed for the season, so after breakfast we drove around to the other side of the lake and down a long tree-covered road to the nearby Rollins Pond Campground, which had showers available.
Ed had recommended that we check our the Wild Center in the town of Tupper Lake, about 15 minutes away from here, so we headed off there next. We had packed up the tent quite early as there was some rain forecast this morning, and it hit us with a torrential downpour on our way into town. We sat in the parking lot of the Wild Center for 15 minutes, not wanting to get out of the car. We eventually decided to drive to McDonalds for a coffee and to wait for the worst part of the rain to pass.
After refuelling both ourselves and the car we drove back to the Wild Center, and this time we made it inside! We walked in the door just in time to watch a presentation about porcupines. The presenter had one of their resident porcupines Spike out walking around on a table while she talked, and he followed her back and forth as she walked around handing him out treats to nibble on. We learned that porcupine quills are coated in antibiotics, so that if they accidentally stab themselves, they won’t get infected!
The Wild Center is a natural history museum for the Adirondacks and has exhibits on all sort of things from wildlife like trout and chikadees to sphagnum moss bogs and forest mushrooms. We spent a few hours wandering around the center, and saw another presentation featuring an otter. The otters who live here are larger than sea otters, which we’d seen before, and unlike their ocean cousins they live solitary lives. We saw some other amazing things, like a glass case full of beetles which were devouring various dead animals, like an owl and a rat. The carcasses had little signs on stakes next to them recording the date that they’d been put in there, to show how fast dead creatures can be decomposed out in the wild.
We’ve seen a lot of crappy information displays during our trip, but we both agreed that the Wild Center was up with the best. They had lots of hands-on, live demos, and info was presented in a variety of easy to consume formats like diagrams, short facts, and succinct explanations. Our Wild Center ticket gives us entry for two days, so we’re planning to come back again tomorrow to walk on their extensive trail system when it’s not so rainy. We had a slow, late lunch in Tupper Lake, and then headed back to our campsite.
I’m now sitting in the car as a thunderstorm rolls overhead, watching lightning bolts hit somewhere in the forest and listening to the almost immediate crash and boom of the thunder echoing back and forth around the sky overhead. A brief gust of wind got me out of the car to batten down the front of the tent because Katie, who’s lying up there reading, thought it was going to take off! I had started a campfire about 5 minutes before the rain started, so I’ve stocked it high with wood in the hopes that it’ll be able to ride out the storm. I’m writing today’s blog post while checking on it out the window.