Andrew and I spent last weekend in Old Forge, NY, with some friends of ours. Paola is a classmate of mine at Buffalo State in the Dietetics program, and she and Mark got married this past fall. Mark grew up going to his family’s place, called ‘The Hut,’ in the Adirondacks. Old Forge is about four hours from Buffalo and a destination in both the summer and winter months. The Hut is on a lake, with a beautiful view from the living room. It’s a cozy, homey-type place–a few bedrooms and bathrooms, a kitchen and living room and fireplace. It’s decorated with very traditional ‘cabin’ decor–bears, ducks, pine trees, wood accents.
We started our trip with lunch at Betty’s, in downtown Buffalo. So good. Can’t wait to meet them there again soon!
We drove up on a Friday afternoon and got in just before dinner. After unpacking and sitting for a bit, we went out for a nice dinner at one of their local favorite restaurants, where we enjoyed great service and great wine. I had a truly fantastic dish, the ‘Brazilian Pork,’ which combined juicy pork medallions with a mix of black beans, onions, peppers and green chilies with sweet potato fries. Very memorable.
The next morning, our only ‘activity’ was to go snow shoeing later on, so we hung around until about lunch time. So nice to just relax in our jammies!
We ate brunch at a local diner, where Paola and I both ordered the buckwheat pancakes with blueberries and pecans. Also very good.
Here we are, snow shoeing at a local golf course in about four feet of snow–SO MUCH harder than the snow we’re used to around here. Talk about a work out! All four of us were glad to be finished as we neared the parking lot.
We spent the rest of the afternoon either napping (the boys) or relaxing on the couch (the girls), channel surfing, reading and writing. And snacking. I wrote a blog about National Nutrition Month to be posted on the Buffalo News (more about that later), and Paola and I caught the end of a sappy rom-com once we relinquished control of the remote from Mark, who’d much rather watch golf.
We went out that night to another favorite spot for dinner, where a bunch of us shared some lobster mac and cheese as an appetizer. I ordered the chili burger–why I don’t know–and ended up eating it with a fork. The ceiling of the restaurant was covered with thousands of business cards, but we weren’t able to finds Mark’s dad’s, which he put up there years ago.
Throughout the weekend, snow mobiliers where EVERYWHERE. It was so neat to see them whizzing across the lake, both day and night, and all the machines parked out in front of stores and bars and such. I loved that even ‘nicer’ restaurants are very casual, especially this time of year, when pretty much the only appropriate footwear is snow boots.
We turned in early that night–must have been wiped out from the snow shoeing–and slept in the next morning. With the time change as well, we weren’t all out of bed until well after 10 a.m. After relaxing a bit, running the laundry and cleaning up, we stopped at another local diner on the way out of town for lunch. My Rueben sandwich was fantastic, and Paola and I got some bread pudding to-go for the ride home.
We had a great weekend and were so thrilled to spend time with our friends in such a beautiful place. Sometimes you really have to ‘get away from it all’ and just relax. Between Andrew’s summer trips to Lake Tippecanoe in Indiana and this year-round getaway in the Adirondacks, it makes me want to have something like that for our kids one day. Somewhere not too far away to call our own, to make memories, and to get away from it all.
One day.
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