Check out Lake George, if you have a chance. Or better still, Burlington, VT. (The Lake Champlain Chocolates shop in the Church Street Marketplace can cure all ills.)

Enjoy the rest of your journey!

“Hey, Heid, let’s try the hike to the Fire Tower on Rondaxe- it’s just 2 miles.”

“But it says intermediate….”brisk” 30-minute hike……I don’t know…with four kids??? Plus, all I have are flip-flops. Why don’t we go with this one. Cascade Falls. Listed as easy. And only a bit over two miles?”

And so we park the brown Mystery Machine at the Trailhead in Eagle Bay. And enter the Adirondacks with a pink Jansport that holds 2 liters of vacation cottage-brewed sun tea, one bottle of Off!, a cantaloupe, and a knife.

Meadow decides TO-BE-CARRIED is by far the best way to travel and so I utilize my mighty hips; I transition from right to left every 8 minutes or so as my flip-flops smack against the ( now ) even terrain. I remark on the glory of womanly hips.

At the 2-mile mark, Kenny wonders where the hell the Falls are and discovers a sign pointing to Cascade Falls, Cascade Lake, and Queer Lake spur trail. It seems as though TRAIL MARKER in a particular color actually dictates the way the trail is marked. It seems uphill. I stub my toes frequently and ask Meadow to hold my hand….you know….for her sake.

If you have checked any of my relatives’ Facebook Wall’s lately, you’ll know that Queer Lake was 97% probable as a destination based on the ridiculous “How Gay Are You” quiz. It’s more than 8 miles to complete that hike. We hesitate. We are trying to decipher which way is Cascade Falls. we have swimsuits. we want to stand beneath the Falls and yell. Kenny points out that two more miles carrying a baby might suck. And the conversation sounds like this:

“What do you think, Heid?”

“I don’t know….looks like 2 miles more to the Falls. I don’t know anything about the mountains.”

“So…you wanna go back?”

“Or keep going”, I say. “The map showed Cascade Lake as a loop- wouldn’t it only be two miles more to get around a loop and maybe we’d pass the Falls?”

We go forth. Can you sense the foreshadowing? How do you think this might end? You see, with this family of six, anything can happen.

My hips are not as stoic as they appear. “Hey, Kenny….let’s swap.” The toddler is lifted to her father’s shoulders.

After some time, Dad complains. “Wish we had had room to stash the back-pack-carrier in the van when we left.”
“That sucks…..oh! I have an idea,” I quip. “Stuff her between Evie’s back pack and my back!.” We manipulate Meadow until she is sandwiched against my backside. An arm dangles over my shoulder and another wraps around my neck. She pinches my chin in a rhythmic pattern. She sleeps. Dead weight. In the Jansport. My arms fall asleep. And tingle. “Ummm, Kenny?”

We are at least 4 miles in and no Falls are in sight. Raine and I pause often….as if a sound-mirage is occurring. “I hear it….shhhhh…right? You hear it, don’t you? Is that the trees? What the hell is that anyway?” We think it could maybe be a moose??

Kenny notifies us. “There is no Fall sounds. It’s the damn trees in the breeze.” He now moves ahead of me, Raine, Grace, and Evie with Meadow upon his shoulder in deep slumber. The four of us Left-Behinds feel spiteful….and bug-ridden.

” I hate bugs in my eyes. ”
” I hate bugs in my ears.”
“Well, I especially hate eating the bugs,” I say as I cough and spit.

We delve into the the back pack and retrieve the bug spray. We spray until the canister is emptied. We all take a pull off the sun tea. We drain the container. Grace claims to hate it. Evie wants to remove and dissect the tea bags.

“I’m thirsty, Mom.”
“I don’t like tea, Mom.”
“The BUGS!!!!! Mom!!! The bugs are BUGGING me!”

I bust out the cantaloupe and begin to carve slices and feed them to my children as if we are marooned on a island with no nutrition for days. The panic has set in. Am I being appropriate as the Mother-Warrior? Will we ever leave the forsaken forest? Are there bears? What in the hell does a moose sound like?

Dad said that the tracks were moose! I recognized them as the horse shoes that they were.

A member of our party announces he must take a dump. We walk on. The sensation grows. The Member repeats the need. I describe how a bear shits in the woods. The Member goes as the Bear goes. The bugs swarm as we wait….backs turned as requested. My patience is thinly disguised, “It’s okay, we’ll wait.”

Remove your underwear, wipe with them, and get rid of them. You won’t be the first in our family to do that.

By now, Kenny is back-tracking to raise terror in the hearts of his family. “I hear thunder. It’s getting late. We have to move faster…gotta get outta here. Can I have the bug spray, please?”

We exchange guilty glances. “Sun tea?”

We hand him half a cantaloupe and a knife. He stalks off. Frustated, he chucks the cantaloupe to the deer. Disappears ahead on the trail with Meadow’s small, innocent hand in his. She marches on. The nap helped.

“OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SHHHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT, ” we hear from a distance. Accompanied by Meadow’s cry of frustration. She’s three. We know this cry well. And we know she’s pissed off.

Apparently, the grass that appeared to be simple grass was a floating grass MAT, of sorts. Kenny’s misstep landed him 4 ft deep in black mud. Meadow landed close by. She loathes mud.

We Left-Behinds approach. Timidly. “Is there a good way through to that trail on the other side?”

Kenny’s hands go up and a look of incredulous anger crosses his face as he sneers, “If there was a way through do you think I’d look like THIS???”
He has mud in his sneakers. Mud up his shins. Mud coating his swimming trunks. Probably mud in his ass crack.

With each hesitant step forward, I lost a flip flop in the mud. With each lost flop, Raine retrieves it behind me. Each time I hear the sucking noise give up my shoe and imagine the labor of love it must be for this child, who also detests all things germ-filled and filthy.

Long-gone, Kenny “hellooooooooooooo”’s through the woods as he worries our whereabouts. With Evie piggy-backed upon me, we soundlessly shout, “Well, if you weren’t so freakin’ far ahead you could see us!!!!”

I have the van keys.

We pass rocky slopes. An old fire ring of a girls’ camp of past times. Another creek before the path resumes.
We stop. Rest and listen. Carve our names on a wooden bridge. Clean our mucky feet by a lake that we cannot name and wish the green canoe before us was not full to capacity with the lake water it sat in.

We have to be close to the Trailhead. What the hell Lake did we circle anyway? It was no 2 miles. Had to be 7 or 8 by now. Evie requires another piggy back ride. Grace declares, in her Scarlett-tinged voice, “I cannot go on. Just cannot go on any more!” She sits on the dirt. And tears roll down her freckled face.

Sharp words exit my mouth. “Move!” is all I seethe.

The skin of my feet between my toes is slipping away from my feet. Evie has a sore at the top of her shoe. Grace is so over-heated she strips to her bikini. Raine is already missing an item of clothing.

Evie has a EUREKA! “Mom, check my back pack. Remember the recital on Friday? Sheila bought me a pair of black knee highs in case you forgot.” Evie and I each remove a shoe. Remarkably, the same foot. Left. We replace the shoes with black knee highs. We each carry our left shoe and hold hands, limping towards the end of the rail where Kenny waits with a look of sheer amazement on his face. We look a hot mess.

“Um. I’ll go the next 1/2 mile and get the van. See the road there? You go and wait by the roadside. I be there in 5 minutes to pick you guys up.” Kenny jogs off alone.

We wait. Roadside. Nearly naked Grace waving her white sundress at us all as if in surrender. Kenny appears with a wry grin, “Wanna ride?”

PS- I had lotsa Moon Pies, too. Price Chopper had a 10 for $10 sale :)

In reality, I have what most people would consider a mild case of claustrophobia, and just IMAGINING being in the middle of six people in a U-shaped booth-like table setup makes me hyperventilate. (Take me with you on your next trip. I’m FUN!)

Have a great rest of your trip. I’m hoping for less soggy weather, and a trout the size of…I don’t know what size trout are supposed to be, but a BIG one.

You also get mad props for being biased in favor of ampersands. :)

That’s awesome your parents went with you AND you all enjoyed yourselves. Close quarters, rain, my kids AND my parents is actually what I fear the 4th level of hell to be like.

Try and enjoy the trip as much as possible..there are nothing like making memories for your children.

Apples to Apples is a great game for making memories. My family still jokes about the time that I played the “piranha” card for the word “cuddly.” My son attacks me saying “NOM NOM NOM cuddle with me!” at least once a week.