“My doctor tells me I should start slowing it down—but there are more old drunks than there are old doctors so let’s all have another round.”
-Willie Nelson
Last weekend P and I gave ourselves a gift. The last few weeks have been tough, what with the death of my sainted mother and a hurricane deforesting Wyldswood. So Peg arranged to have both Thursday and Friday off, and away we went on an adventure to Saratoga Springs and Lake George.
Thursday presented a spectacular blue autumn sky, so we hopped into the Columbia for the fifty minute flight to Saratoga County Airport. That would've been five hours or more on the interstate.
The guys at the FBO arranged for the rental car in the foreground to be waiting for us out front, so we tossed our bags in the back and took off toward our first stop, the Sagamore Hotel on Lake George.
The last time we bumbled up to the Sagamore was at the height of the pandemic--we still owned the Cardinal, and had flown it to Albany for the weekend. This was the very day the cable networks called the election for Biden, and we ended up sipping champagne and watching a spontaneous street party break out in Saratoga Springs, then driving up to the Sagamore and sneaking past the gate guard to continue the celebration over Cuomo fries in their hotel bar. We always promised ourselves we'd come back; now here we were.
The hotel property was as beautiful as we remembered, perched on a bluff above Lake George, the "Queen of American Lakes".
We strolled the lakeside, took happy hour on the manicured grounds, and ended the day with room service and a visit to the hot tub. We may have been on holiday, but both of us were flat out exhausted from the last few weeks.
The next morning began as a sort of pre-concert tailgate party for us--we had tickets to the Outlaw Music Festival in Saratoga Springs that evening. So why not have a mimosa or two with our corned beef hash? Easy on the juice, ma'am. Just enough to make the champagne opaque.
Afterward P perused the tastefully decorated lobby, gathering lots of ideas for spending what little is left of our savings.
Finally we were on our way down the hill and along the shore, past the mom-and-pop motels tucked into the woods and through the tacky, Gatlinburg-esque tourist trap of the town of Lake George. The next major town down the road was Glen Falls, which seemed to be comprised of miles of box stores and chain restaurants until we found a quaint, vibrant downtown where we stopped to watch golf and have a cocktail in a sports bar decorated with memorabilia of the town's great high school football teams.
That's one thing about these northern small towns that strikes a contrast to what we're used to experiencing down south. Their little towns are mostly busy, with stores and restaurants in a walkable downtown and a little industry nearby. Corning may be the prettiest of the type, but it's certainly no aberration.
Eventually our meander took us into Saratoga Springs, another busy, affluent town with an economy driven by mineral springs, horse racing, and a generations old tradition of rich New Yorkers having summer places there in the hills. Plus, downtown is almost gridlocked with tourists this time of year.
Thankfully for us, we had reservations at the Gideon Putnam Hotel, hidden deep on the grounds of the Saratoga Springs State Park.
The place may look as opulent as the Sagamore, and the room rates were the same, but don't be fooled. The GP has a decidedly more plebian air about it, being run by the state of New York and all. It's closer to the Wakulla Springs Lodge, or maybe the Georgia State Park hotel at Amicalola Falls.
Once we arrived, we drove around the corner to the adjacent golf course to make a tee time for Saturday and buy a pair of golf shoes, then back to the hotel for a pre-concert nap.
We had different visions regarding this nap, however. P wanted to continue the theme of catching up on our rest; I started thinking that maybe I wanted to get to the concert in time to see Los Lobos, which unfortunately was two acts ahead of Bob Weir, late of the Grateful Dead, their two performances separated by some group called the String Cheese Incident.
So I had a very grouchy P on my hands as I shooed us toward the concert venue, surrounded by thousands of Dead Heads in tie dye and dreadlocks.
But she rallied, and we arrived in high spirits.
I probably have a thousand photos of P on my phone, but that may just be my favorite. Such a beautiful woman. Lucky me.
We didn't find our seats in time for Los Lobos, instead catching the tail end of the String Cheese Incident, which unbeknownst to us would be the musical high water mark of the evening.
The crowd was mostly old hippies and not-so-old hippies there to see Bob Weir. Watching their uninhibited dancing around with no one in particular, fascinated with the fanning of their own hands, we quickly surmised they weren't just smoking a little weed. They probably thought we both were dinosaurs--I mean literally dinosaurs, with little Tyrannosaurus arms.
One of these hippies sitting next to us, completely tatted and pierced, complained that P and I were talking too loudly for her to hear Bob Weir when he took the stage. That's a thing about these northeastern hippy dippy types--there's still a strong puritan streak in them, particularly the women, and just because they look like they're trying out to join the Maori doesn't mean they aren't judging you. She finally gave up and moved. We weren't changing our act for her.
Plus, Bob Weir sucked. I mean, I admire the fact that he's up there at 75 playing music, but this whole jam band thing, with its endless improvised meanders to no apparent musical end, just requires a hell of a lot more psilocybin or LSD than we were getting osmotically from the folks around us. It was just a loud, pointless exercise.
But finally Bob gave up, and 90-year-old Willie Nelson took his seat on a crowded stage.
I'm told Willie used to play for hours at his concerts, and spend a lot of time talking to the crowd. On this evening he played for maybe an hour, efficiently working through his standards as all of us geezers sang along. It was fine, and fun. But damn, we're all getting old.
That fact was front-and-center the next morning, when we awoke bleary-eyed from a late, somewhat sodden evening to face a bright Saturday at the park. Thank God we had a day to recover. Deciding that only Southern hangover fare would bring us back to life, we drove into Saratoga Springs for brunch at Hattie's, a nearly ninety-year-old institution featuring fried goodness served on plastic checkered tablecloths. I had the country fried steak and eggs. P ordered perhaps the best fried chicken I've ever tasted--crunchy, piping hot, and spicy without going overboard.
The only thing they flunked was Southern Grammar 101. I corrected their mistake on our check.
Afterward P and I strolled an arts festival in the park, complete with live jazz, then drove back to the hotel for a quick nap before walking to the Automobile Museum to check out the James Bond car exhibit. After another long stroll through beautiful woods, we shoehorned into our day nine holes of forgettable golf, played on a beautiful course but marred by slow-moving walkers (why do New Yorkers not understand the necessity of golf carts?), and ended the evening with supper on the porch at the Thirsty Owl, enjoying maybe the best eggplant parmesan I've ever tasted.
By this point in the adventure we were completely exhausted, so the evening ended early with us completely passed out in bed by nine or so.
This, in turn, meant we were up a lot earlier than planned, which worked out smartly because a line of bad weather was bearing down on KELM. So after a quick coffee downtown, in a cool little coffee shop that featured the board games of our childhood (Yahtzee, anyone?) and retro candy like Junior Mints and Sugar Daddys (we didn't partake), we drove down to the airport for the flight home.
Thankfully, the 400 foot ceilings at Elmira had cleared by the time we were on final, and it was an uneventful trip. And we arrived home in time for me to fall asleep in front of the TV watching the Bills, then smoke some ribs and wings for supper.
Now time to reapply my game face, with 107 unread emails and a rancorous Zoom mediation in a half-hour. Here we go. Time to pay for the party.
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