Somebody had a birthday today – hint: she started it with an early morning walk into town to get muffins and scones from the Bluesberry Bakery for the family. So yummy!!

Although downtown Lake Placid mostly hugs the shores of Mirror Lake, its eponymous water body is much larger and not far away. You can take a boat tour from the local marina, so that’s what we did. Our guide provided lots of colorful commentary on the many wealthy landowners and their lakeside “camps” – think 20,000+ square foot dwellings with multi-bay boathouses, and most see use only a few weeks per year. The natural beauty was also very much in evidence despite the haze blanketing the region. (The locals are always at pains to point out that the haze has come in from western Canadian wildfires and is not the typical Adirondack air.)

Speaking of locals, they are something of an endangered species these days as rich out-of-towners price everyone else out of the market, and much of the housing that remains has been converted to tourist lodging. The end result is that the year-round population has dwindled to fewer than 1500 people and none of the local businesses can hire enough help.

Having explored Lake Placid by boat, we returned to downtown for a picnic lunch by the shores of Mirror Lake. We chose sandwiches from a place offering 46 different options, each named for one of the Adirondack high peaks (>4000 feet in elevation). Turns out the variety outweighed the quality but we still had an enjoyable meal.

The big adventure of the day was at “Experience Outdoors”, an outfit that specializes in zip lining, high ropes adventure courses, and other outdoor tours. As our readers will know, we’ve done ziplining and “via ferrata” as a family but have never tried a formal high ropes course together so Susannah’s birthday provided a perfect occasion. And the one we chose proved to be great opportunity because, according to our guide, we were some of the first to use it – the course had just opened the week before. (He also shared with us that the construction costs approached $1M – hopefully they’ll attract plenty of customers to recoup that investment.) Our route included many interesting and challenging elements, such as the “light bulb” traverse shown in the picture below. The overall difficulty level was quite high and the planners had incorporated an inventive carabiner system that minimized the amount of clipping and unclipping needed between elements. We emerged two hours later, very sore but very satisfied!

Having had such a delightful dinner on Monday, we returned to Lisa G’s, for another meal by the waterfall. To be sure they would not run out, we preordered dessert this time – and Susannah’s arrived with a candle. A most memorable birthday indeed!