April 19th - Auburn, New York to Essex, Vermont

Another bright and sunny day as we left Auburn for our drive across the Adirondack Mountains of Upper New York State. To start with we drove by the 'finger' lakes near Auburn, so called because they are a series of long thin lakes.

Everywhere there was snow, often quite deep, and the lakes were either completely frozen over or with small areas of open water. Winter is definitely still here in New York.

We drove round Syracuse and then about 50 miles north we entered the Adirondack National Park. This is an area of over 6 million acres, with much of it pristine wilderness. Our drive took us past one frozen lake after another with pine clad mountains all around.

A staggeringly beautiful drive and one which we will remember for a long time.


After about 100 miles we came to Lake Placid, the site of two Winter Olympics; in 1928 and 1980. After Lake Placid we descended from the high mountain areas to Lake Champlain. The lake is the boundary for much of the New York/Vermont border and we took the car ferry across the southern part of the lake into Vermont.

From there our drive took us up the eastern side of the lake to our hotel outside Burlington, one of the largest towns in Vermont. We are staying at The Inn at Essex which describes itself as Vermont's Culinary Resort.

This is because it houses the New England Culinary Institute. This evening we are going to sample some of their wares!

We have now driven over 5,700 miles and by the time we reach our finish we estimate a total distance of about 6,500 miles.