North Pole Campground and Wilmington, New York

We are all set up and settled in for our stay at North Pole Campground. We had a couple issues yesterday afternoon, but we solved one of them (at least for the short term) and decided to adjust to the other. Our first problem and definitely the more serious of the two, is electrical in nature. We have inside our Montana a voltage indicator. It will alarm if the voltage coming in is either too high or too low. Either way, it is not good on the appliances, especially the air conditioner. When I turned the air conditioner on, the alarm sounded—showing a voltage reading of 102. Gene called the office and they sent out the campground “electrician”. I don’t really know what all went on out there at the electrical post, but the conclusion was that there was 120 volts coming out of the post so it’s our problem. It is a little better today, so we have decided not to move to a different site. Our other problem involves those $298 digital converter boxes. We have cable here and they don’t support cable. The only thing we could do to have any TV reception at all was to disconnect the boxes.

Ausable River at campground

Today we strolled about the campground and about town to get ourselves oriented to the immediate area. This campground advertises as having the “best rating in the Adirondacks”. If it doesn’t, it should. It is a wonderful campground. It is fairly large as campgrounds go, but there are not so many sites. The reason—because all the sites are huge with lots of trees all around. The campground is spread out on both sides of the road with RVs and tent sites in both areas. The tent sites are the best we’ve seen in a long time. We are on the side which has hiking trails at the back of the campground. One of these trails connects to the trail up Whiteface Mountain—a popular Ski Resort named best in the East 3 years in a row and the site of Olympic Ski competition in the past. At the back of the campground on the other side of the road is the Ausable River. About a half mile away the river has been dammed to create a small lake right here. The campground has canoe and paddleboat rental and there is a small public beach on property adjacent to the campground.

Ausable River below the dam

The campground office opens at 8 AM with freshly brewed Green Mountain coffee. I think sitting by the lake drinking a cup of Vermont’s finest should become my regular morning routine.

Fisherman on the Ausable

We continued our stroll to “downtown” Wilmington. It’s really not much of a town at all, just a crossroad, not even a traffic light. We can actually walk from our campground to anywhere we want to be in the village of Wilmington. At the crossroads, a mere half mile from our campsite, is the Whiteface Mountain Veteran’s Memorial Highway. With the smell of hot brakes in the air, it conjured up memories of the road to the summit of Mt. Washington. As we crossed the bridge we could see the Ausable as whitewater beyond the dam. We found the small grocery and the public library. We’ll have to go to Lake Placid (13 miles) for a large grocery and fuel. It is a charming little community nestled in the mountains with a river running through it. This is wonderful.