Hop in the car, kids, we’re going to the Adirondack Mountains!

During the old days, when my family got back from road trips to North Georgia and North Carolina, we could not wait to get the film developed at the drug store.

In those times, you had to wait for it.

We would set up the screen and my father, who was a decent photographer, started the slide show. My father passed for a patient man in the summers when we made him stop for rubber spears in Cherokee, ride the rickety gondola at Ghost Town in the Sky in Maggie Valley and eat gas-inducing fried chicken in Franklin. He indulged our love of clip joints but hated fishing farm-raised trout you caught for supper. As an outdoorsman, it went against his moral character. It was as confusing as his love of slide photos.

In honor of my dad’s vacation presentation, let’s take a look at my recent car trip through the west side of the Adirondacks range. Think of it as a PowerPoint Presentation, if that helps.

Make sure you pronounce it right

I am sure there’s a nice part of Albany, N.Y., but I did not go to it.

It’s the capital of a large state, just like Tallahassee. My wife and I had a great dinner downtown near the Capitol, which looks like an old hotel surrounded by Brutalist skyscrapers. Did I mention our tasty meal? There, I said something nice.

“I see why the novel ‘Ironweed’ came from this place,” I said. “This a blue collar city but it gave us one of the best books. William Kennedy is such a great guy.”

“There’s a reason ‘Ironweed’ is so depressing,” Amy said under her breath. “Just look around.”

We drove to nearby Schenectady, just a few miles from Albany (not pronounced All-beeny like the one two hours away in Georgia). Schenectady looked just like Albany. Only smaller.

“We should head north,” Amy said. “It has to get prettier than this.”

Mark Hinson travelogue:

• If Florida is the crazy cousin, Vermont is the laid-back, sensible uncle
• Seedy nostalgia for '70s-era Times Square adds juice to ‘The Deuce’
• The plan was to have no travel plans in those days
• There's plenty of turbulence to spare in the air

It should be named Sarasota Springs

The Adirondack Mountains north of Albany, N.Y., look just like the Great Smoky Mountains. They are old, wooded and have been there a while. It was like coming home.

Saratoga Springs is similar to Asheville, N.C., only with much more money and fewer hippies. Rich people really know how to build a nice horse track, which is at the heart of the small city. The population is around 25,800 but the influx of wealthy folks goes up during the racing season in the summer. It’s a tourista town and they know how to treat touristas, especially ones with money.

In 1945, one of the most popular films was the romantic drama “Saratoga Trunk.” It featured a manservant named Cupidon who was a dwarf and Ingrid Bergman, who hailed from Sweden, playing a light-skinned Creole woman. I’ll wait here while you stop snickering. 

We went to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame across from the tracks. It had rows of painted jockeys out front that were hard to miss. There are enough horse portraits inside to choke a horse.

As a fifth-generation North Floridian born and raised in Jackson County, I was surprised to see a portrait of President Andrew Jackson. You probably know him better as Old Hickory. Or, simply That Weasel. He was the one who got demoted from the front of the Springtime Tallahassee parade because of his racist past and his love of hanging people.

Jackson was former jockey, horse breeder and racer. When he was in the White House he operated a stable on Pennsylvania Avenue. Andy, according to the plate on the wall, used to run horses under his wife’s maiden name. Seems about right.

Down the road from the horse museum, we visited the Yaddo artists colony. It has hosted such writers as John Cheever, Truman Capote, Hannah Ardent, Sylvia Plath and Flannery O’Connor. The old mansion, which used to be owned by the mega-wealthy Trasks, was undergoing renovations. We walked around the gardens.

As my friend the professor, editor and writer Kim McQueen said, “At least tending flowers is a marketable skill.”

Ask Chance the Gardener.

Put it in your cone and smoke it

In the Adirondacks, everyone prefers frozen custard over ice cream. Custard in a cone tastes like vanilla on steroids. Delicious steroids.

We got lost in Long Lake (hey, it’s possible) so I consulted a map. Those are paper things once used in the days of slide shows and the Civil War. In the meantime, Amy discovers Custard’s Last Stand. It’s an old drive-in diner that materialized out of the past. 

“I think it was here before ‘American Graffiti’ was ever shot,” Amy said as she scarfed her frozen custard. “But it looks like it should be in ‘American Graffiti.’”

“These days they would have to name it Battle of Little Big Horn Replenishment Outlet,” I said. “By the way, where did all the Iroquois and Mohawks go? I haven’t seen any since I got here.”

Still on about the Miracle On Ice

In Lake Placid, the place is crawling with New Yorkers. As in New York City. And their kids. Lot and lots of tweens. They think they are in the country. 

Most of Lake Placid is built along Mirror Lake. At the “resort” hotel on the waterfront, the kids were in the water and their half-drunk, sunburned, Yankee parents stole our deck chairs. We did not care. They were having a ball.

To build an appetite, we strolled through Lake, er, Placid Mirror and gawked at all the hockey and Olympic gear for sale. If you recall, the 1980 Winter Olympics were held in the Adirondacks. The American hockey team somehow licked the Russians in a game still known as the Miracle On Ice. If you have forgotten, the shops will be glad to remind you.

The guy who brought the Olympic Committee to the Adirondacks in the ‘60s built a toboggan by the lake to show off the joint. It must have worked but it’s only open in the winter. You have to sign your life away, pay $10 and that sends you sailing out onto the ice during the winter months. Nobody but stupid Floridians visit the toboggan in the summer.

We eventually walked down the street to dinner at a fancy hotel. It was better than our first date, which included a viewing of “Natural Born Killers” (1994) and a large plate of sushi. Seated, by accident, in a tree-level, private porch we had a smashing view of the water, whatever lake. We had two waiters. One was Serbian and the bread guy was a local kid. 

The Eastern Europe guy was impressed because The Tallahassee Symphony conductor is Serbian (I’m looking at you Darko Butorac) and he had seen a lot of the United States. Damn immigrants.

The younger kid, who was probably about to be a junior in high school, could not wait to leave the Adirondacks. He wanted to be rich and retired before he was 30.

“There is nothing to do here but look at mountains,” he said as he served the bread. “It’s boring.”

“Trust me, when you are 50 or 55 you will want to come back,” I said. “That’s a lifetime from now though. You’ve got time. Head to New York City as soon as you get a chance. One day, you will be back.”

How much is that water again?

The drive up to the top of Mount Whiteface outside of Lake Placid was beautiful. It better be for the $40 entrance fee.

“This looks just like Mount Pisgah in North Carolina, except with different trees,” I said as I drove the twisty, skinny highway.

“Will you stop with the Smoky Mountains?” Amy asked.

“Did you know they are named for Motown legend Smokey Robinson?” I said. 

Amy gave me that look.

“Don’t look down, buster,” Amy said.

At the top there was a castle, as they called it, a gift shop and a diner. It was time to take a fistful of pills, so I trudged upstairs in the dark to buy a bottle of water. I pulled out a $4.05 bottle of Dasani out of the display cabinet. I did not care how much it cost.

“We don’t have electricity,” the cashier said. “I can’t sell that to you.”

“What if I gave you exact change?” I said.

“I can’t sell that to you,” she said like I was simple. “You have to see the guy downstairs.”

I put the bottle of Dasani back in the cooler and felt my way down the dark staircase.

The guy behind the outdoor grill said, “I have to go upstairs and get them out of the cooler.”

“Of course you do,” I said.

No matter how high you go, you are still at the bottom.

Staring into a hole

Before we froze our nits off crossing Lake Champlain to Vermont on the ferry in late June, we stopped at the Ausable Chasm. It’s called The Grand Canyon of the Adirondacks for a reason. It costs almost $30 to get in and take a raft down the Ausable River, which was cutting its way through the rocks long before my father was waiting for film from Watson Rexall. 

It’s free to see from the bridge, so that’s where we went.

Vertigo struck when I peeked over the edge of the railing into the abyss. My knees buckled. I felt my head spin over the gorge.

Ausable Chasm is around 500 million years old. We’re talking Cambrian Period, when trilobites and arthropods were in the ocean and humans were far off in the future. It took the colonialists until 1765 to find the place and, of course, it became a tourist site in the eastern Adirondacks. Way to go, white folks. You own it.

“Lean in a little more, I want to get the whole thing in the background,” Amy said and pointed the camera phone.

“There’s no way you can get it all,” I said.

Contact Mark Hinson at mhinson@tallahassee.com