Katrin & Jojo

October 2, 2008

The Adirondack Park, located in New York state, is the largest park in the US (except Alaska), and covers an area of 24000 km^2 (for comparison: NRW is 34000 km^2). So it’s sufficient to say that we’ve been driving for a few hours today without leaving the park or even traversing half of it. When we left this morning the weather was still shaky with heavy showers from time to time, making it hard to drive. But as we entered the park the weather gradually got better, so when we reached the visitor information center (which took us more than 3 hours driving in the park itself), we felt safe enough to take a short 2-mile hike. After about an hour of hiking (Katrin was annoyed with me because I was whistling all the way, to keep potential bears alarmed) we returned to the road and drove the short distance to the beautiful Lake George, where we got ourselves a room and a nice pizza. Tomorrow we’re gonna try (given that the weather plays along) an 8-mile-hike nearby before crossing into Vermont.

Now, what else can I tell you about the Adirondack Park. It’s simply magnificient, and we liked it even more than the Acadia National Park. Good thing too that right now the Indian Summer is in full bloom. The simple idea that a strip of land as large as this one is inhabited by so few people and covered by so few roads is hard to grasp. Having to tell yourself to fill up the gas because the density of gas stations (or cities or anything for that matter) is pretty low is something special ;).