Jethro Borsje

The blog post related to our honeymoon in the USA is split up into three parts. Part one can be found here and part two can be found here.

The weather channel predicted good weather for the first couple of hours of the day, so we decided to go hiking early in the morning. We had to drive to the starting point of our hike, but because of some bad directions we ended up at the wrong place. After walking around there for 3 km we figured out it was the wrong place. We decided to drive a couple of miles further where we finally found the starting point of our hike up the mountain called "Sleeping Beauty" from where you have great views over Lake George and its surroundings. The hike up the mountain was very nice and we picked up a geocache along the way. From the top of the mountain we had a beautiful view of Lake George and the forest in autumn colors. During the day we only one other group of people (three of them) who were hiking, so it was very quite and peaceful. The weather turned out to be OK for most of the day, the last hour of our hike we had some rain, but because of the density of the forest we did not get to wet. It was a lot of fun hiking through the beautiful forests of Adirondack Park and we were looking forward to the next two days.

We ended up hiking 11,5 km at Sleeping Beauty and 3 km during our false start. Bellow you'll find a GPS track log and height profile of the hike at Sleeping Beauty.

During our second hiking day we wanted to climb the peaks of Cascade and Porter, two peaks in Adirondack Parks "high peaks region". The weather predictions looked nice, rain was expected at the end of the afternoon but before that it was supposed to be sunny. It turned out the weather channel was wrong this time. After an hour of hiking it began to rain slightly which got worse and worse as the hours progressed. The hike up the mountain wasn't to hard, but the steep rocky parts quickly became wet and slippery, so we really had to watch our steps. At the top of Cascade there was so much wind and rain we didn't manage to climb the last few meters. Because of the bad weather we decided not to go to the top of Porter.


We ended up hiking around 7,5 km. Bellow you'll find another GPS track log and height profile, the height profile is incomplete because the GPS batteries died during the way down and I did not feel like replacing them in the heavy rain. Although the weather was bad we enjoyed ourselves very much.



After the hike we visited Lake Placid which hosted the winter Olympics in 1932 and 1980.

Sadly today is our last hiking day at Adirondack Park. We planned to do a hike in the vicinity of Sleeping Beauty. During this hike we picked up several caches, which where hidden at nice places in the forest. We had to cut the hike short, because the weather was getting more and more wet. The outside temperature was somewhere around 10 degrees Celsius which makes you quite cold if you get wet. We hiked somewhere around 12 km passed a few beautiful ponds.

On Thursday we drove approximately 375km from Lake George to Boston. We enjoyed Lake George and Adirondack Park very much and where a bit sad that we had to leave. Along the way we picked up a geocache and avoided the main highway in order to see more of the landscape. We drove to some nice forests which had great fall colors. We arrived at Boston during rush hour therefore it took some time to finally reach the hotel (the Royal Sonesta). We dropped of our suitcases at the hotel and drove to the airport to drop of the car. We have reached the last city of our USA 2009 holiday :-(

Fenneke and I tried to see some whales and dolphins when we where in Ireland. However the whale watching trips over there got canceled more than once due to bad weather. We decided to test our luck by booking a whale watch trip in Boston. We boarded the ship around 10:00 AM and departed for the Stellwagen Bank, which is where the whales reside during their feeding season. After an hour we reached Stellwagen Bank and right away we spotted our first whale! It's an amazing sight to see a whale coming up from the ocean to get some air. After taking in some air the whale dives down again, which gives you an incredible view of its giant tail fin. During the entire whale watching trip we saw several Humpback whales, one Fin whale and one Minke whale. Biologists of the Whale Center of New England were present during the trip and they provided us with a lot of knowledge about the behavior of whales.



After the whale watching cruise we visited the New England Aquarium, which houses a great collection of fish and other sea animals. We also saw a 3D Imax movie on the various types of endangered whales, orca's and dolphins.
In the evening we had dinner in the theater district of Boston (which seems very small once you have visited the NYC theater district!). After dinner we went to see the Blue Man Group. We saw them once already in Amsterdam and really wanted to see them again because their show is very entertaining. This time we had front row seats which means you'll have to wear a poncho, because the paint they use sometimes flies of the stage. I would really recommend front row seats for the Blue Man Group, because it's great to see their facial expression from up close.
After the Blue Man Group we took the MBA back to our hotel where we ate some very nice New York Cheese Cake.

Today the weather is very bad so we decided to visit a few churches in Boston. The nicest church is Trinity Church, from an architectural point of view this a very important building in the United States.
After visiting a few churches we spent the day reading books and watching a movie on HBO. In the evening we ate another magnificent cheese cake.

Today is our final day in the USA, we can't believe how fast the honeymoon passed by. We loved being in the USA and will definitely come back here. We especially liked being in the smaller towns and the outdoors, so that will be a part of the USA which we will discover in more detail in the future.
Our flight was supposed to leave at 13:30 from Boston to Washington DC where we had to transfer to our flight back to Amsterdam. However the plane which was supposed to take us from Boston to Washington was delayed, therefore we were going to miss our connecting flight in Washington. The airline (United) rerouted us via Chicago which gave us an extra flight time of approximately two hours. Luckily for use they booked us in the Economy Plus class which gave us more room for our legs. We arrived in Amsterdam on Monday around 09:30 after a pleasant flight.

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