Our North Country Honeymoon, Part II: The Good Stuff.

No, not THAT good stuff....

Stuff like hiking and gemstones and wildflowers and blackflies. We hiked some of the trails adjoining the Garnet Hill property, including one trail that goes up to an old abandoned garnet mine. Those who know me know that I LOVE jewelry. I hoped to find a record-breaking, gem-quality bauble in those hills and rocks. I did not, but it was still fun trying.

Andrew braved the highest, steepest wall of the old mine.



I didn't get quite that far up. See, I am afraid of heights, and I figured that the laws of physics would prevail, and gravity would tend to keep the really, really BIG garnets down at the bottom of the pit.

I searched among the rocks at the base for awhile, then reconsidered, thinking that maybe the really, really BIG garnets would be up at the top of the mine, where people afraid of heights would not be so apt to search, so up I went, to knee-wobbling height.




The reward for our hard work: handfuls of teensy little port-wine colored baby garnets. Tiny little precious sparkly delights.




Too bad the local garnet jewelry-maker (within walking distance of the lodge) was closed, or else I might have come home with a golden, garnet souvenir of our wonderful honeymoon trip. Guess it wasn't his "season."
So, I turned to hiking and exploring with Andrew. We started with an easy 1-hour hike from the lodge up a small mountain. The ground was wet, due to recent heavy rains (that had washed out parts of the gravel road leading up to the lodge, we were told). This log bridge crossed a particularly mucky place on the trail:



Here I eat an orange while pesky, annoying, blood-sucking blackflies eat ME. They are straight from the depths of hell, these insects. We had to buy netting to go over our hats in order to keep the blackflies out of our ears, noses, and mouths. They are that bad. And the bites are no picnic, either.




Our hikes were full of encounters with beautiful wildflowers like this one, a purple trillium:





Me, on one of our hikes. This was a short, but very nice, walk that we did just before dusk one evening while driving back to North River from Lake Placid. We did a rolling hike through the woods and ended at this peaceful lake.





Our last hoorah before heading home to Florida was whitewater rafting on the Hudson River. (I'm in a blue helmet, Andrew is to my left, in a yellow helmet). My first whitewater rafting trip! A highlight of our day was when we both accepted the dare of our raftmate and jumped off a big rock in the middle of the river, into the 52-degree water!!