Blue Mountain Lake

As you can tell by the date, work has been crazy. Now that my CSE's are almost over, I can breathe a bit and blog! Unfortunately, the boys are in school this week and we are not; hence the weekend trip to Blue Mountain Lake. We stayed at Blue Mtn. Rest, a cottage that loves dogs, so the whole family could go! We had a fast and furious blast! How many families can say they climbed a mountain, canoed the perimeter of a lake and trout fished at Buttermilk Falls all in one day? The scenery was gorgeous and God blessed us with a wonderful Saturday. At the base of the mountain it was 60 degrees. At the summit ( 3,759 ft) it was less than 30 degrees. The last 1/2 mile of the climb was steep and had at least 3 feet of snow and ice pack. In spots we had to use ropes and the boys learned fast! We were so proud of Connor. He did the whole way by himself, and this was the toughest out of all we had done ever before. It was 2 1/2 hours on the way up and 2 hours down. We saved time when we had to slide on our butts down the rope on the descent! Milo was a blast. He ran circles around us the whole time and was really good at scouting the best path ahead! Colin kissed the summit when we got there! On the way down his legs were jello and he was laughing so hard once we had to stop for him to catch his breath! The canoe ride was fun. On the way back across Blue Mountain Lake the boys were hauling a red hippity hop ball bopping along the water behind them! It looked hilarious. They found it and brought it back as a memento! Tony and I thought of Garrett and our senior AP English Project! Tony and Connor tried the trout stream at Buttermilk Falls to no avail. Maybe next time with the Troop! We scouted out the entire trip for the summer from Blue Mtn Lake, through Eagle and Utowana Lakes to the Marion River through Racquette and up to Forked Lake and Buttermilk Falls. Just a beautiful area and the locals were super nice offering us places to park our vehicles when we come with the 14 scouts next time. The DEC and Ranger were awesome help and gave us great pointers. All in all a great weekend! Wish we had the boys all week to do this!