August 8 - September 2nd, 2014


We arrived in the Adirondack Mountains on August 8th on our way to Plattsburg New York. The beginnings of the Brothers family as we know them today. Myron and Karen had their beginnings together here and they wanted to return to their beginnings together. Karen and her four girls became a family here and two more were subsequently added to the family before they left New York.

Here is the home of Ronnie Brothers, sister to Karen located in Chazy New York.

Here is the acreage that Myron grew up on. The original home burnt to the ground and they sold the land. The new owner put another home on the land.

Here is the home that Karen and her girls favored the most. In any conversation with her she always referred to this home. It had an in ground pool and tennis court. In the next picture is the school the Lake girls went to which was within walking distance to the home.

On one of our many tours of the area we managed to stop by this Maple Farm. They produce maple syrup products from maple syrup, maple crème sugar, to  maple candy. Yummy.

Here is where it is produced. It may be hard to see but to the left of the building is grey plastic pipes that is attached to bore holes in the maple forest next to the building that takes the maple syrup directly from the tree to the vat used to store it until it can be boiled down to the syrup we use on our pancakes. This used to be done by individual buckets.  This has been a family owned and operated since 1889.

Marion, Karen and us two guys bought some of the products just being produced. The crème maple sugar spread is to die for. I sucked down most of the first bottle in three days on toast. Almost sent me into sugar shock.

This is the modern version of the maple vat used to boil down the syrup. Myron used to help on these farms as a young man and used to stoke the fires under the vat. The syrup season is in March and very cold and the vat was located outside. He used to stand in front o it feeding wood into it in a shirt without a jacket it was that hot.

Myron's sister and niece took us to Lake Placid one afternoon. We had a great time. The drive through the mountains was really nice.

The town hosted the winter Olympics in 1980 and I can't see how they handled it. The town has one main street and it is not very big. They must have been wall to wall and shoulder to shoulder to even walk.

The one noticeable thing here is that there is not a lake called Lake Placid. The lake nestled in the cradle of the mountains and town is called Mirror Lake. It was awesome.

We stopped for lunch which turned out to be a mistake as Marion wanted to take a cruise of the lake.  We missed because of the lunch stop.

On the 31st of August we ate dinner at Myron's nieces and her husbands Pizza Palace. The pizza was great. The crust was made from scratch and the ingredients were terrific. If ever in the Plattsburg area, stop and have some of the best northern pizza there is.