An Ice Palace And A Parking Lot

The dogs and I had made our way through the Keene Valley and up through the high peaks region of the Adirondacks. I'd been looking forward to the town of Saranac Lake because I knew that this was the final day of their Winter Carnival. But when I arrived, I found traffic jams and a full parking lot. But I did get to snap a picture of the ice castle as my car inched along:

Apparently the Adirondack tourist business is doing well this winter. I'd wanted to stop and get photos of the ice palace and other ice buildings, but it would have been nearly impossible to get in there and then parking with six dogs in the car would present yet more problems. But I was stopped, waiting for traffic, so I got one more snapshot before continuing on my way up to the farm:

Once I'd passed through the town of Saranac Lake, the traffic dropped to almost nothing and the drive became more relaxed and scenic. I still hadn't found anyplace to let the dogs out, but I knew that there was a parking area on Rt. 458 which was likely to be plowed. When we arrived, I found it only semi-plowed, but since there was no traffic on the highway, there was also no one parked there. We had the parking lot to ourselves and the dogs were overjoyed:

Seamus and Daphne found something which smelled interesting:

"C'mon over here, guys. Look what we found!":

I never discovered what the group of them had found because little Clover discovered poop and immediately began eating it. I quickly put a stop to that although she couldn't understand what was the big deal:

Once I had them all unglued from their fascinating but disgusting aromatic tourist attractions, I walked them up and down the parking area a few times:

And loaded them all back into the car. The car needed to get a running start to exit the parking area through the plowed snow banks, but we were soon on our way again, by this time only about a half hour from the farm: