I didn't get as much sleep as I'd wanted because Eileen woke up several times during the night and the dogs made lots of noise. Meanwhile, I kept making an attempt to get more rest and didn't come upstairs until around 0630. By then, Eileen was in full housecleaning mode - she tole me she'd spent a lot of the night reading and organizing her scrapbooking materials. Feeling unproductive, I helped her for a little while and then went outside to shovel around my car again. Temps were in the low single digits in the early morning but things started to warm up by 0800. We'd decided that Eileen's two wheel drive was probably not the best vehicle to use for a drive into the Adirondacks so I set up Nessie to carry all of our stuff and the two dogs. Eileen told me she usually leaves Juneau behind (because he is unable to do as much walking or climbing as she and Mika can) so this was a real treat for him. We departed Eileen's house by about 0830 and drove to the Village Diner for breakfast. We also got food (for lunch) to go and departed Potsdam by (0850). We then drove (via NY-72, NY-11B, NY-458, some back roads, NY-30, NY-86, more back roads, NY-3, more back roads and then NY-431) to the Toll Booth Parking Area at the bottom of Whiteface Mountain. The dogs were pretty good but they made lots of excited noises all the way. Meanwhile, Eileen and I had some good talks about various things - one of the most interesting items was when we started high-level planning thoughts on a possible Cape Cod course in 2023. We were parked and geared up by about 1045 and then started our climb up the Toll Road. When I'd planned the trip to see Eileen, we'd talked about how I could snowshoe up the mountain while she used her skis (with skins) to reach the top. The way we saw it, we'd both get mountain time and finish at about the same time if we tried it that way. Eileen forgot her skins, however, and the whole plan had to be reconsidered. Since we'd brought Juneau, we decided to split up the dogs so that we could each go at the pace we wanted. It was sunny but very cold (low double digits) and windy. Along the way, my beard froze... Juneau wasn't used to being on a leash but we decided that we'd need to keep him with me until Eileen and Mika were out of view. The plan worked well but Juneau whined for most of the climb, even after he couldn't see them. At about the two mile mark (for me), I unleashed Juneau and continued my climb. He immediately got so far ahead of me that I couldn't get him to stay or wait with word commands alone. Meanwhile, I started to meet more and more people and chatted with them. Along the way, I even passed some who were skiing uphill... Each time I stopped to talk, Juneau would come back to me and whine - I think he was saying "let's go!" I'd almost made it to the three mile mark before Eileen reappeared, skiing downhill. The dogs' reunion was spectacular! It turned out that the strong wind had blown all the snow off the road above the four mile mark and Eileen was having trouble without her skins. She and the dogs blazed away and I snowshoed downhill alone. After reaching the bottom, Eileen started back uphill and met me just after I passed the one mile mark. She then took her time skiing down with me. The dogs seemed exhausted and Mika got painful ice crystals in her paws. Despite the challenges, however, I think we were all happy for the outdoor time. We ate our lunch in the car and I laughed a good bit while Eileen fed some of her food to the dogs. After feeling a bit less frozen, we departed the area and drove down into Lake Placid to do some shopping. It took a lot of work to find a place to park because the whole town was VERY crowded. After finally getting the car in a good place, we walked around in town (from about 1510 to 1610). We stopped into almost every shop so that Eileen could get some gifts for one of her daughters. She asked my advice a few times and I tried to help her decide on items to buy. We also got some ice cream at Emma's Lake Placid before departing. Since we'd had trouble finding a bathroom all day, we stopped at Hannaford's just before leaving town. On the way home, the dogs were conked out in the back... We mostly backtracked via our morning driving route on our way home. We had three separate deer encounters on the road and the snow started up again. I started to wonder about whether I might be "trapped" another day because the forecast called for more snow in the next 24 hours... Talking to Eileen during our ride and the good spirits we were both in after our mountain adventure made me dismiss thoughts about the next day. I knew that Mollie would love to know that I'd used Nessie to take some dogs for a ride and Eileen had kidded me that she was going to tell Mollie about this ("we both want you to like dogs"). She actually sent Mollie a picture of me driving the dogs - I'll be interested to see what kind of feedback I get about that... We then had some great talks about our day and plans for the coming week. Eileen wanted to get some dinner at her favorite Indian restaurant in Potsdam but I wasn't really hungry. As a result, she basically talked herself out of eating dinner by the time we'd reach her house and gotten cleaned up (1745). I talked to Mollie and Eileen talked to her sister. A bit later (1900), I decided that I would try to convince Eileen, as diplomatically as I could, that it was worth another excursion from the house to get something good to eat. This turned out to be a game saver and, by the time we got home again (2000) and started watching the rest of "The Book Thief", she was in very good spirits with her delicious dinner. We barely made it to the end of the film before Eileen was nodding off but she told me she'd had a great day. We said goodnight - I read until around 2200 before going to sleep.
