It was a cold and feeezing night, we did all our shopping with movies,
heaters, halloween masks/movies etc and we left on sat morning around 5am
from NYC headed towards 'tupperlake', upstate NY!
We had rented a car and we got a new one, a Chevy Malibu!
It was a long and scenic route and it was a beautiful drive with the sunrise

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and the drive along the highway with the fall folliage at its peak!
The leaves's colors were yellow, purple, red, orange, brown, green, pink,
etc etc.. It was one hell of a spectrum all along the drive.

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As we got higher in NY, there was snow and all these lovely parkways were
''garnished" with snow!!

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We went through lake placid, the US winter olympics training center and
reached tupper lake around noon. We checked into the motel and went for
lunch. The hotel was a good AAA approved hotel with TV n other pretty good
amenities so it was very comfi. We then grabbed some lunch and left for the
hiking spot. We chose the Ampersand mountain, which is about 3k feet high.

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It was about -12 Deg C! We were geared many many layers of warm clothing, we
headed out for the trek.
It was a perfect day for treking as the sun was coming down "blazing" and
also it had snowed about 6" overnight hence providing us with a perfect
trail.
The trek was absolutely phenonminal. The trekking trail was well marked out
with markers on trees all along the path and hence we dint need any guide or
anybody to lead us to wards the summit. as we went higher, the snow got
better and also it was about 8" in depth. All the trees and rocks had a good
covering of snow.

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AS we got closer to the summit, it was about 3.30pm when we took a pit stop.
>From here, we found ICE and the trail also got a bit steep. This was a bit
precarious to climb with the limited hiking gear what we had and hence we
decided to turn back. We then reached the foot hills around 5pm and we
headed back home. (it gets dark by around 5pm here at this time of the year)

We then saw 3 movies on the laptop which my pal had bought and had a great
laugh! We then had a great and comfortable nap and then checked out at 10.30
and were on our way back home. We took a different route and this toow as
amazingly beautiful! All through the way there were many lakes, most of them
semi frozen.

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We then reached back home at 8pm , thankfully with not much traffic around
manhattan.

All the pix r at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~an2029/images/ad/pix.cgi