Olympic Lake Placid

1980 Olympic Center

Lake Placid is all about the Olympics, especially the 1932 and 1980 Winter Games. They are also all about making the Olympic Venues available to the tourists, who has cash in their pockets and who is all about seeing what there is to see.

1932 Olympic Stadium

1932 Ice Rink

Today we did something we rarely do—bought the admission package ticket to see it all. Our campground had made it clear we should not go anywhere without checking in the office to see if they had discount tickets. This morning, doing as we were told, we stopped by the office on our way to Lake Placid to check out the Olympic stuff. I had wanted to see a couple things—the Olympic Center and the Ski Jump towers. What the office had was a discount package ticket for both these things plus the Olympic Museum, the Whiteface Mountain stuff and the Bobsled/Luge Run. Plus the tickets were good for the rest of the time we are here. We could do some today and some another time. That’s great. We took our tickets and off we went.

1980 Ice Rink

Bobsled and luge runs

Our first stop was at the original Olympic Center which houses the ice rink used in the 1932 games. Still in use, there were Olympic hopefuls out on the ice today. I was most impressed with the seating capacity. It was really very small with only a few hundred seats. The original building had to be added on to, of course, for the 1980 games. Here we were able to walk into the rink where the American Hockey team defeated the Russians in 1980. Next, we spent a little time in the Olympic Museum. It was small but packed full with memorabilia from various Olympic games.

Bobsled Run

After our picnic lunch we went over to the Olympic Sports Complex where we got a tour of the Bobsled and Luge Run. It was used in the 1932 games and is still used for practice and for some competitions, but because the sleds have gotten much faster over the years, it was not used in the 1980 Olympic games.

Olympic torches

Ski jump model

The rest of the stuff on our “see it all” tickets we’ll save for another day.

US hockey team stuff

On our way home we stopped by the Sugar Maple Farm. Of course, it is not sugaring season and we don’t plan to be here in the winter when it is. We just wanted some good maple sugar.

So many choices