ADK Club and Ausable Water Stewardship Trip

Today was the day! I rousted everyone out of bed early and we got on the road to drop Maddie off for the ADK Club and Ausable Aquatic Stewardship Program for the week. She will be learning about watersheds, taking water samples and learning about macroinvertebrates.

The ADK Loj where the kids met up with the instructors. They will be staying in lean tos for the week! 

It doesn't look it here but she truly is excited!! 

Brian and I were able to met Seth and Matt(? I think that was his name...poor guy!) when we dropped Maddie off and they were both great guys. The funny part is that Maddie has on her Camp Fowler shirt and Seth said "Hey! Wait a minute! I never heard of that place until last week! We shared a campsite with some teens on a trip from Camp Fowler. I had my own group of teens." so that was a very cool thing right off the bat. This is only the 3rd year they have offered this camping trip/class combination and Seth explained it had started in memory of a friend of his who worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a aquatic biologist. They want to get kids excited about that in her memory. Then Seth asked where we were from and when we gave him that answer he said "Hey! I know someone from there. She worked here for a while but now she is being a forester intern up North." so its a small world. 2 connections in less than 15 minutes. Shortly after that we took off to let Maddie have some breathing space but remembered part way down the driveway that she may want the portable chair we packed in the car. We turned back around and when I got out of the car to go in and ask she met me at the door with a HUGE grin on her face...much better than the one in the picture so I am glad we went back! And the answer was no, she didn't want the chair, only 2 other people had brought chairs and she had enough to carry already. She can flop down on the edge of the lean to or on an erratic..all good!

Then Brian and I headed off on our own excursion and took a nature walk at the Brewster Peninsula Nature Trails. 

So many mushrooms! It has been so wet lately...

Indian Pipes!

Huge mushroom...I wasn't kidding about the wet!!

Cool bridge and we did walk over it! Brian went to step out on it then turned back to me and said "STAY IN THE MIDDLE!" Hmmm.....

West Lake Placid

Looking off the other side of the bridge

My favorite guy!

Whiteface Mountain in the distance!

That was fun then we did the touristy thing and went into Lake Placid to check it out and have lunch. We decided during this trip that if we win the lottery our house will be on the other side of the Adirondacks away from the tourists!! The odds of this happening are so slim we might as well dream...I mean one actually needs a ticket to win.

We suspect this is trucked in from the ice rink.....

The high jumps from the Olympics! This is from the road.

And now we are home! Brian will be going back later in the week to pick up our camping scientist and see how her trip was!