Dear Dayre,
Good morning! It's 6.45am in the US now. Anyone missed me? 🙆🏻 Here to do a speed update before I disappear from the Dayre-sphere!
Well I'm currently in Lake Placid, a town on the Adirondacks mountains, about 5 hours drive away from New York!
Road tripping with Fish and Alvin and thank god for Alvin who's been doing all the driving cos Fish and I have only been doing the sleeping 😂😂😂
Ooh discovered this set of Dayre USA stickers, perfect!!
It's my first time road-tripping and it's a whole lot of fun to have your own transport in a big country because other forms of transport are actually very expensive or inconvenient.
Uber seems to be the cheapest and most convenient way because it's almost half the price of a regular taxi plus tips!
Speaking about the tipping, it's really quite xiong. Every meal, taxi ride or what not is usually tipped around 15%, some more.
My meals in the USA have been quite pricey too and on average every meal costs around 20USD? My wallet is crying after every meal hahaha 😭
But generally the food at Lake Placid has been pretty good! We don't eat stuff like fast food and all that here because the town is so rustic the only popular food joint they have is Starbucks.
Fish and I on the back of our Jeep!
We rented a lodge at Lake Placid together with the rest: there's 7 of us and this lodge is super super nice 😍
Outside our lovely abode for about four nights. It's such a nice house that I'll be sorry to leave!
Look at the cosy living room area! 🎄
It's so beautifully furnished and I love the rustic look to it. But although it looks old-fashioned, the amenities are incredible 🙀
The fireplace is a gas fire and you can turn it on with the click of a remote control!
Even the bathroom has got heated tiles 👍🏻
That's very comforting because the temperature outside has been ranging from -6 to about 3 deg! We were lucky because it's been a very late winter and it hasn't been snowing like it should. But we managed to catch snow yesterday!
At the Mirror Lake right next to Main Street!
We found an incredible restaurant that serves super good breakfast and we've been going there every day?! It's all locally-sourced produce and everything tastes so good!
Fluffiest pancakes I've ever had in my life 😍
Fish and Woon ❤️
The fresh yogurt parfait also beats anything I've tasted in Singapore. Fresh-made yogurt is delicious! It's not sour at all and has such a gorgeous creamy texture and light milky taste.
Home-made jam!
We've been eating ridiculous amounts of food everyday, every meal. And the food is so rich!
In other news, we also managed to catch the premiere screening of Star Wars and it's my very first Star Wars movie so I think a lot of the homage to the series was lost on me 😂
It was super fun though because we watched it at this ancient old-school theatre at Lake Placid where they still have a box office and seats are first-come-first-serve! We saw Star Wars fans queuing up for the movie since 7am in the morning although the box office only opens at 6.30pm!
Look at these cute Star Wars fans in line!
Fail selfie at the theatre, we wanted to do a selfie with the poster hahaha
The ladies!
Our tickets that look like those you get at old arcade machines. Cool or what?
Watching the movie here was really fun because the audience clapped and cheered at the start and end of the movie, and whenever one of their old favourite characters appeared, like the scene where Han Solo and Chewbecca appeared!
🙊
Shan't spoil the movie for you 🙌🏻
Check out the cinema!
There's no Dolby digital surround sound too hahaha.
We spent our first day at Lake Placid exploring Main Street and all the shops! I'm so glad I invested in a pair of sturdy winter boots that we spotted at a shop along the street because it's so comfortable and came in handy during our hike up the mountains today.
My first pair of UGGs for about 230USD. Winter boots aren't cheap to begin with and when I was at Timberland outlet at IMM, all they had were ugly designs that were still pricey, around $180 to $250 sing?
This pair is quite nice and they are fur-lined plus waterproof!
They are keeping my feet warm and snug now! Very comfortable too!
So amazed by how huge the snowflakes are that you can see the beautiful structures
of each single flake!
We took a hike up one of the mountains and it was actually a pretty challenging trail. A lot of big rocks and worse still icy bits that were slippery and scary!
At the same time, it was snowing and freezing cold, and in fact when we reached the summit, the fog was so thick that we couldn't see anything at all through the mist!
Mount Jo was the trail that we took, which promised a manageable trail with a good view.
So we took the short trail up and the long trail down.
It was so cool because we saw ice formations and icicles on the rocks on our way up!
Halfway through!
Reaching the summit, and it was snowing furiously! We ran into two super cute dogs along the way too 😍 Love how the dogs climb the trail and scamper up so easily while we two-legged creatures struggled so much 😂
It was snowing this heavily!
When we were climbing up, we didn't feel as cold because of all the exertion, but once we hit the top of the summit and were exposed to the windy snow, it was absolutely freezing.
The view behind us was obscured just minutes ago, before the clouds cleared for us to get a wonderful view of the scenic surrounding 😍
Too beautiful a view!
I asked the nice owner of this cutie if we could have a photo together. Sid (the dog) got soooo excited once I sat down that it knocked me over and started licking me all over my face with wet slobbery kisses!!
My hat got knocked off me too 😂
Group photo at the peak!
The hike up was exhausting especially for not-very-fit people like me, but we all managed to successfully hike up, and of course we had to hike back down too, which is more challenging than hiking up always 💪🏻
We had to get down on fours and scramble down on our butts at some points of the hike because it was just too steep/slippery! My UGGs really served me well because they were waterproof and so warm. Even with gloves on, my fingers were frozen.
And of course, one of the main reasons for our stay at Lake Placid was to go skiing!!!
I'm no pro at skiing and have only done it a couple of times, and both times, it was only a short 1-2 hours while on tour with my family.
This time round, we started off with a beginners lesson and continued on to actual skiing down slopes!
On our first few attempts on the beginners' trail! The ski conditions were poor due to the lack of snow.. It seems that in the US, some places are experiencing a spate of warm weather.
It was quite hard to ski, because there were icy patches all over as well as bits of ground that wasn't covered with snow yet. But it started snowing quite heavily over the next day, and we went back again the following day to completely packed slopes: packed with snow and people.
So much more snow in just two night's time: they also had snow machines working overtime to create artificial snow while it was snowing!
By our second ski day, we were quite good with the beginners slope already and thought we wanted to try a more challenging slope. Adventurous us decided to take the gondola up the mountain and we started to freak out when the gondola kept climbing higher and higher…..
Until we reached this super steep slope and we looked at one another and questioned our sanity hahaha 😂
Since we were at the top and no turning back, we decided to go for it and we really did try going down that crazy ski slope!
If a beginners slope is level 2/3, I'd say this slope was a level 6 at least. It looked effortless when the experienced skiers went down it, but once I started hurtling down the snowy slope, I knew I wasn't gonna make it down in one piece already 😂
It was really too steep for us beginners, and not even a couple of minutes into the slope, all of us had already fell down 😂 it was scary because we weren't able to control our speed or even direction at all, and the edge of the slope was a direct drop and you could possibly fly off the slope and break your neck.
Falling down is the easy part, because getting up was the truly difficult bit. It requires so much effort to get yourself up again without sliding further down and falling again 😭
On my second or third time falling, I think I just sat there for five minutes while all the pros whizzed past me expertly because it was so so so tiring and so difficult to get back on my feet! the trail was about maybe ten times the length of the beginners slope and we had such a long way to go.
To cut a long story short, the ski patrol actually came over to 'rescue' us and escort us personally down the trail… By walking down 😂😂😂
I think they wanted to rescue the other skiers from us hindering the trail actually 😂
So in the end, we took our skis off and walked/slid down the slopes instead until we reached the flatter grounds 🙄
Funny story: The ski patrol thought we were all fourteen year old teenagers HAHAHA must be the Asian thing. Everyone here seems to think we are all kids!
It was totally hilarious, but walking and sliding down the slope is not an easy feat too because we were wearing chunky ski boots that were very hard to walk in, and the snow was so thick. On the steeper parts we just slid down on our butts instead because it was just easier that way 😩
We were literally escorted all the way back to the beginners slope HAHAHA but well we made it down in one piece!
We did some of the parts of the slopes that were less steep 😂 Then removed our skis again when we hit the steeper parts.
We must have been quite a pathetic sight haha when we reached the end of the slope, this is what we looked like. Encrusted in one layer of ice because we fell and tumbled through the snow and ice so much 😂
My hat looked like this at the end of the day. Good thing we had a washing machine and dryer in our lodge and we could do our laundry!
After three days of physical exertion (skiing, trekking and then skiing again), I'm feeling the ache in muscles I never knew I had, from my arm and back muscles all the way to my butt and calves 😂😂😂
I fall asleep straight away every night once I snuggle into bed! Shiok.
And well-fed every meal 😋 You really feel the need to eat more because of the freezing cold temperatures and physical energy used!
It was a very good four days at Lake Placid and I'm quite sad to leave but I think four days of subzero temperatures is enough for me 😂
We'll be heading to Boston next and it's gonna be like 6-15 deg over the next few days, which is gonna feel all snug after -6 deg ❄️
Can't wait to eat seafood!!!