The Camping Trip

For Fourth of July weekend, Vanessa and I set out on an adventure.  We stuffed the car with clothing, towels, snacks, sleeping bags, and a tent, and we made off for the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York.  We had gone to college together in Saratoga Springs, and Vanessa is originally from Hoosick, NY, so we have a lot of ties to the area.  

We left Friday afternoon, after skipping out of work a little early.  Our first stop was for dinner in Albany.  We were meeting up with a friend of mine, actually my former boss from my college job at the student library.  David (yes, he is a David too) runs the visual resources department at Skidmore College, and he is an artist.  His lovely wife Vaneeta is an English Professor at The College of Saint Rose.  She is originally from India, and is a magnificent cook.

I'm sorry that I did not take any photos aside from the one above of the three of us, but I will say that we had a lovely home cooked meal of slow-cooked pork curry with sides of fresh mango, carrots, steamed rice cakes (really cool!), and a delicious cabbage and mustard seed slaw.  The pork was tender and richly flavored.  It was seasoned with, among many other things, a unique vinegar made from a kokum fruit, which Vaneeta can only get in India.  We had some wonderful chocolate tart for desert served with homemade raspberry preserves and mint from their garden, which is beautiful, immense, and largely edible!  Above we are posing together with some silly cookbooks and some black pepper corns they gifted to me from their friend's home in Coorg, India, allegedly the region with the best black pepper in the world.  They also gave me some New Mexico Female Green Chili powder, from their recent vacation there.  It smells really interesting, and of course, just sounds so ridiculous that I can't wait to try it.

After Albany, it was off to Saratoga to hang out and stay with some friend in town.  We had breakfast the next morning with Vanessa's mom and stepdad, who were in the area.  We stocked up on supplies and gifts, and were off for the mountains.  Our first full day was pretty low key.  We swam at our favorite spot on Great Sacandaga Lake, took some scenic drives through the mountains, over dirt roads, and along assorted rivers.  To the left, Vanessa stands in front of the rapids of the Sacandaga River in Hadley.  After some relaxing, some exploring, and a fair amount of driving, we reached the Village of Lake George, where we sauntered and succumbed to the tourist paraphernalia that abounded.  Between shops, we relaxed on a patio overlooking the lake vista and enjoyed some crispy fried clams and french fries.  We did not linger too long, eager to return to the wilderness, and we soon found ourselves checking into a camp site in Warrensburg along the Schroon River.  We pitched our tent, galvanized some wood into a fire, and set about the task of making a campfire supper.

To say that we were ill-equipped  to cook outside would be generous.  We brought next to nothing.  We had wooden shish kebab skewers, aluminum foil, a pocket knife, and duct tape.  The duct tape brings to mind the old Sesame Street game, "one of these things is not like the other."  Indeed, we had grabbed this item at the last minute, thinking, you never know: patching a leaky tent, mending whosics and whatnots.  In some unforeseen way, it would probably come in handy.  In any case, that was what we had.  That was what we were working with.  To eat, we had picked up some beef at a grocery in Warrensburg.  The selection was limited, and what we ended up with were beef short ribs.  We also had some mushrooms, a bell pepper, an onion, two red potatoes, salt and pepper packets, and thankfully some good bread and wine from Saratoga.  I say "thankfully," because we didn't have to do anything to those ingredients; they tasted delicious without any effort on our part.

Dinner was a challenge.  In my mind I had this idyllic recollection of a horseback expedition I took in the Argentine countryside.  A friend and I rode for hours with two gauchos (Argentina's answer to the North American cowboys), through valleys and over meadows and mountain tops.  We stopped midday in a thicket of trees.  I dismounted my horse, Calafate, and secured him to a tree.  One of the gauchos threw open his saddlebag, and out of nowhere emerged a large steak and three sausage links.  Within minutes, a fire was blazing, and an iron griddle had been staked in the ground.  The meat juices dripped and the fire let off the most tantalizing smoke - smoke that seeped in your nose, and went straight to your stomach, to give it fair warning of what was to come.  When it did, it did not disappoint.

My Fantasy Gaucho Lunch

Outside Bariloche, Argentina in 2008

My campfire experience was nothing like the gaucho meatsploitation of my memory.  To begin with, starting the fire was a real pain in the ass.  I've made camp fires before, but it had been a few years, and I was rusty.  It took a number of matches and few reconfigurations of the firewood, but eventually, very eventually, the fire was safely ablaze. 

Vanessa served as wilderness sous chef while I tended the fire, and cooked the food.  She wrapped the red potatoes in foil, and I threw them in among the hot coals.  She cleaned and chopped the vegetables, arranged them on the shish kebab skewers and I gingerly leaned them against the burning logs.  The real show-stopper was the meat, and this is where the duct tape came in handy.  The four short ribs were in total over a pound, so we had to use two skewers to support the weight. On each set of skewers we put two chunks of beef.  The skewers were then, yes, that's right, duct taped to larger sticks, leaned over the fire ring, and anchored by yet heavier sticks.

"The Stove"

The design was less than flawless, and a few problems did arise.  Two of the meat skewers started to bow under the heat of the fire and the weight of the meat.  The duct tape that secured them soon heated to a point where is began to melt.  Luckily, I saw the problem as it was happening and removed the meat from the skewers.  They had a nice char on one side, but I was either going to have to configure a new contraption or just wrap them in foil and throw them in to finish with the potatoes.  I chose the latter.  So half of the beef was cooked over an open flame, and the other half was seared and then baked.  Below is the open flame meat, right before done.

Open Flame Grilled Short Ribs

The next problem arose as the second set of ribs began to dip lower into the pit.  Vanessa and I had sat down to take a breather, and by the time I noticed the sticks tilting ever down and down, it was too late.  I did not leap up in time to catch the meat before it plummeted into ash.  I grabbed two sticks and feverishly tried to clamp and lift the now blackened beef out of their pit of doom.  All the while muttering under my breath things of which I am not too proud.

I won't say that the meat was ruined.  It was still succulent and tasty, underneath a crunchy, flaky coating of burnt char.  It was, at the very least, not what I was going for, but it was still edible, and I found it borderline enjoyable.  There was plenty of food, and the other batch of beef came out fine.  Here are some more photos of the action.

Extracting the Baked Potatoes From the Fire

Fire, Wine, and Food Wrapped in Foil

Short Ribs with Veggie-Kebab, Baked Potato and Garlic-Basil Bread



A Salamander

 

Sunday was a rainy morning, but there was enough of a respite for us to squeeze in a hike.  We climbed Crane Mountain, which was supposed to be a short hike.  The trail was indeed short, but it also happened to be near vertical.  The photo below is very telling.  The trail was a rock scramble up, a climb more than a hike.  But it was billed as a day hike.  It was in fact the longest half mile that either Vanessa or I had ever "hiked." 

That was actually the path for one grueling, steep half mile.  It was challenging, but the view was worth it.

Vanessa and I Resting on the Mountain

The descent was treacherous, as was the ensuing dirt road, which my car should receive a medal of valor for surviving.  The mountain drained us of energy, so we cooled off with some ice cream by Schroon Lake.  Back at camp, we cleaned up and showered, and made the not-too-difficult decision, that we would go out to dinner that night.  We drove to the town of Bolton Landing, on the west bank of Lake George. 

Bolton is the unsuspecting home of one of the greatest German restaurants in the United States, Pumpernickel's.  Vanessa discovered this place in college, when her German language class trekked up north for German-American Day.  We have been returning there about once or twice every year.  For dinner we enjoyed a great salad bar, with beets, pickled slaw, and all sorts of vegetables and beans.  I had some beef and barley soup, which was also enjoyable.  To drink, I had a glass of Spaten Lager, which was precisely the size beer one would expect of a German restaurant, and Vanessa drank a glass of Liebfraumilch, a German white wine.  Then for the main course we both ordered Rahmschnitzel, which is to say that be both had a sauteed veal cutlet, cooked with fresh mushrooms in a creamy, sherry wine sauce.  To sop up this delicious sauce we each had a generous pile of spaetzle, and we shared a side of pickled red cabbage, which, at Pumpernickel's, is the best cabbage I have ever eaten. 

Because we are disgusting pigs, we then shared an obscenely Germanic-sized slice of cake, which I believe was called "Slice of Heaven for Two," or something vain and self-aggrandizing like that.  It was the size of an infant child.  A hearty slice of cheesecake was, for better or worse, forced to bear the weight of a dark chocolate cake, twice it girth, which sat atop it.  The whole Teutonic ogre of a cake was glued together with dark chocolate frosting and was finished with a cloak of mini-chocolate chips.  The size of the chips would have been ironic if their numbers had been anything less than the population of a small city.  But alas, this was not the case, and the chips did abound and encase the monstrosity.  Beside the cake was a tower of whipped cream that could have fed a small nation, like Luxembourg or Liechtenstein.  The entire plate seemed a testament to the strength and ingenuity of the German people.  It was like their Eiffel Tower or their Colosseum.  It was a monster!  It was delicious.

We ate half, which would have been a decent performance following a normal sized meal, nevermind soup, salad and a Rahmschnitzel.  And oh!  Did I mention there was fresh hot pumpernickel bread?  It was a meal to remember.

Following a rather uncomfortable night sleep in the tent, we arose the next morning, packed up among a plague of mosquitoes, which sent me swatting, dancing and skipping as if performing some primitive, conjuring form of worship, and we set out.  We stopped again at Great Lake Sacandaga for a swim, as well as at a waterfall in the town of Lake Luzerne, where I indulged in a poptart breakfast.

For lunch that day, we were meeting my old music professor and thesis advisor in Saratoga Springs.  One of our favorite restaurants from our college days had recently expanded and moved locations.  The restaurant is called Maestro's, and they advertise themselves as "A Fine American Bistro."  My professor ordered a speck sandwich, served on a buttered baguette with roasted red peppers, arugula and lemon olive oil.  I had a grilled duck confit sandwich on peasant bread with brie, fig paste and apple butter; it was served with a zucchini salad.  Vanessa took the prize for best order at lunch with her lamb burger on an onion roll with feta cheese, pickled onions, wilted spinach and black pepper aioli; this came with three long handmade tator tots, which defied all expectations of the cafeteria classic.

And that was the trip.  We said our goodbyes, took one last stroll around the downtown, and drove the three hours south to our home in Connecticut.  We were tired as all hell, but we were happy as could be.  We grabbed a cheese pizza in our neighborhood to take back home, and had it with some salad that Vanessa whipped up.  That night we slept back in our soft, comfortable bed, free of mosquitoes.  We slept very, very well.