Pharaoh

Our next adventure into the wilderness was a backpacking trip into the Pharaoh Lakes Wilderness, located between Lake George and Schroon Lake. We parked on the western side of the wilderness boundary and packed up for a night in the woods. Our intention was to camp at Crane Pond but when we got there, we found cars that had driven the trail into the woods!

Since we didn't want to camp in a parking lot, we looked at the map and pressed on to the Oxshoe Pond lean-to. It was the wilderness experience that we were looking for with the lean-to to ourselves. The shore of Oxshoe Pond curved slightly and we were tempted to take a boat (that happened to be there) out on the lake. With no paddles and the sun setting, we had a small campfire and went to bed.

We slept well in the cool weather and awoke later than we thought due to the darkness of the lean-to. We slowly packed our tent in the backpacks and headed on the trail to Crab Pond. The trail eventually looped back to an intersection where we were the day before. We cached most of our belongings in the woods and took the trail to the peak of Pharaoh Mountain.

We enjoyed the view of the ponds that we had visited within the wilderness area and the view of Schroon Lake in the distance. Lunch was SPAMwiches before we followed the herd path to the other side of the peak to get a great view of Pharaoh Lake.

It was getting warm and humid and we concurred that it was time for a swim by the time we got back to the car. We drove to the Schroon Lake town beach and happily waded into the cool water. We got some garbage bread for dinner and started to head back to the orchard in Crown Point.

However, Lisa found a great evening hike on the map and we took a turn towards Cook Mountain in Ticonderoga which gave us a great view of the northern portion of Lake George. After taking in the view, we went to Ticonderoga and got vanilla malts at Stewarts. We took them over to Lisa's aunt and uncle's house for a quick visit.

After a night at the orchard, we headed south to Black Mountain on Lake George's eastern shore. We had admired the mountain on our June paddle but were dismayed to find that the fire tower on the summit has been closed to the public. We took in the view of the northern portion of the lake and headed to the Red Apple Diner II for lunch!

In the muggy afternoon, we went to Fort Ticonderoga for a bit of history. The fort brought back memories of our elementary school field trips and we took every tour available including the one of the King's Garden. Sadly, the fort has a new building which was erected with no attempt at matching the architecture of the older structures. We enjoyed the interpreters in period costume and the fife and drum corps as well as the exhibits upstairs.

After a night in Wadhams, we checked the radar and saw some severe thunderstorms heading in, so we headed home for a few days. We hope to be back to the high peaks if the weather will cool down and stay dry for a few days!