Part III: The end of a crayfish obsession and hip hop fatigue

Rise and shine

Sunday morning found Hugh in the kitchen, doing whatever it is Hugh does. In this case, crafting a feast of leftover meat so wondrous that it brought tears to our eyes.

Hugh cooks / the Pope silently approves

Okay, perhaps our watery vision was caused by the greasy meat cloud that enveloped the cabin. At any rate, it is always good to start your day with a breakfast of "meat, 5 ways" (okay, maybe: "5 meats, 1 way")

Lawdy

Basically, Hugh filled the electric skillet with hot dogs (3 different kinds), kielbasa, Croghan Bologna, onions, tomatos, and potatoes; smothered it with cheddar cheese; and served it on top of biscuits.

Really nasty, amateur food porn.

After breakfast, we all found our own ways of saying our long goodbyes to the VanDerosa:

"I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow"

Chris spent some alone time with his crayfish friends, while the rest of us tried to "shower" in the cold creek (essentially, carefully balancing on slick rocks why trying to splash as much frigid water on your head and torso).

Shower

After that, we burned stuff. Yeah, this is one of those strangely incongruous and slightly shameful parts about my normally eco-friendly, conservationist family. As there is no dump nearby, we always spend the last day at camp burning our garbage. While we do make an honest effort to separate the burnable (napkins, paper plates, etc.) from the un-burnable (glass, toxic plastic, etc.), which we bag and take home, I do have fond childhood memories of watching plastic cups melt into cool shapes--toxic black smoke be damned.

After the Burning, we packed up and headed out.

We made a few stops of course--actually, 3 in the first 20 miles of our trip. We had to get the most out of our cultural experience of the near-Adirondacks by picking up souvenirs. First, we took a slight detour to Indian River, where we stopped at a church-turned-general store, complete with neon beer signs in the formerly-stained glass windows. We marveled at the assortment of beer, guns, lawn ornaments, and knives before buying our obligatory cheese curds.

Church of Beer, Guns and Sundries

After Church, we headed toward Lowville and the erie sight of the hundreds of giant windmills dotting the Tug Hill Plateau.

War of the Worlds

We made another stop at the P&C in Lowville to buy maple syrup, more cheese curds, and several rings of Croghan Bologna, as well as discretely deposit our unburnables in the garbage can out front.

We climbed piled back in the car, made a quick stop at a local produce/cheese/maple syrup store on Route 12, and then resumed our long trip home, South (in an Easterly direction).

South (East happened later)

I don't know when it was exactly that Dan and Chris took control of the iPod--30 minutes into the trip? An hour?--but, somehow, we listened to about 9 hours worth of hip hop in 5 hours. I'm not sure what it was that paralized Hugh and I, but for some reason, we sat in the back seat in a silent stupor, unable to change our musical course, no matter how excrutiating it became. Don't get me wrong, I like hip hop and was a huge fan of Yo! MTV Raps (with both Fab 5 Freddy and Doctor Dre/Ed Lover) back in the early 90s, but I can only take so much and seem to have repressed the memory of much of the trip home. Though I do have a slightly blurred image in my mind of leaving Hugh in his brother's driveway, holding his two rings of Bologna.

Hugh and his souvenirs