Tim Hortons (ONroute Cambridge North)
290 ON-401One last day of travel.
Our weeklong adventure to the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships were coming to an end. We left Lake Placid Thursday night, crossed over in to Canada in Ogdensburg, NY via the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge and stayed the night in a surprisingly nice Motel 6 in Kingston, ON.
J’s typical weekday alarm is set for around 5:30 AM and she just decided to leave that alarm on. We were all ready to get home. We still had about an eight hour drive so getting up and on the road by 6 AM would get us back to Kalamazoo late afternoon.
We didn’t stop for breakfast or really anything before we left Kingston. We just got on the road.
About the time we got to Toronto, B asked if we could find a bathroom. I told him as soon as we got out of the city, we’d find something.
Not too long after that, I saw a sign for an ONroute in Cambridge. It said it was about 35km away so about 20 minutes….at least it would have been 20 minutes had we not been going through Toronto during the morning rush. It wasn’t too bad though. 20 turned in to 40 but he was fine.
I decided to try and make it to the ONroute because I knew we could kill two birds with one stone. None of us had eaten yet and we all had to use the bathroom. We could do it all in one place.
The ONroutes are travel plazas just like you see on the Indiana or Ohio toll road. They’re large building that look like a mall food court. We stopped at the Cambridge North On Route which is on ON-401 east of the City of Cambridge. You hit a large parking lot east of the building first but there are also parking lots in front of and to the west where the gas pumps are. We pulled in to the first spot we could find and headed inside quickly to find a bathroom.
Read more…Harvey’s (Kingston – Division St.)
1141 Division StreetOur time in Lake Placid had ended and we needed to head back to Michigan.
On the way to Upstate New York, we went through Niagara Falls so we could stop at the falls and check that out. It’s not actually the quickest way to where we were going. It was still faster than going through Ohio and Pennsylvania, but the quickest route from Kalamazoo, MI to Lake Placid, NY is to take Highway 401 all the way up to Edwardsburg/Cardinal, ON and enter the US at Ogdensburg, NY using the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge.
On the way home, we took that route. We left Lake Placid around 5 PM and headed north to Canada.
We had planned all along to only make it about three hours Thursday night then finish the drive Friday morning. We started looking at hotels near Kingston, ON and J found a very cheap Motel 6 with great reviews. I keep telling people there is no way I would stay in a Motel 6 in the States but this one in Kingston was really nice and not typically what I think of when I think of a Motel 6.
We didn’t eat before leaving Lake Placid and we only stopped for snacks as soon as we got through the border crossing so by the time we were pulling in to Kingston a little after 8:00, everyone was hungry.
J had found a couple of sit down places that sounded good but actually sitting down for a meal didn’t sound like a good idea.
The last time I drove through Canada, I made it a point to stop at a very Canadian fast food place based on a joke from How I Met Your Mother. J used to watch that show with me and wanted to stop for the same reason. They’re all over Ontario and there was one not too far from our hotel. So we stopped.
That chain is Harvey’s. It’s a Canadian hamburger fast food chain with almost 300 locations….most of them are in Ontario. We stopped at the one in Kingston on Division Street south of First Canada Avenue in a highly commercialized area of town just south of the interchange with Highway 401. This Harvey’s looks like any other fast food place with a pretty generic box shape on a narrow lot. Since J and the kids had never been to a Harvey’s before, we skipped the drive thru and went inside.
Read more…Noon Mark Burger and Pie Joint
2488 Main StreetOne last day in Lake Placid.
L had one more skate at The Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships at the The Olympic Center. It was at about 11:00 AM but we weren’t planning on leaving right away. We still wanted to stay and watch the Senior International Free Dances that started that afternoon. We didn’t plan on driving all the way home anyway so hanging around until five or so wouldn’t be a big deal.
L got one more medal in her last event for a total of three on the week. I watched her get her medal and take one last set of pictures on the balcony with the Olympic rings in the background and then I wandered away from The Olympic Center to get something to eat.
Earlier in the week, B and I had walked down to a burger joint but they were closing just as we got there. I ended up taking him for ice cream for dinner at Emma’s Lake Placid Creamery then later in the night, I ordered a pizza from Ere’s Pizza.
I spent the rest of the week wanting to get back to this place and this was my last chance to do so.
Noon Mark Burger and Pie Joint is on Main Street towards the middle of downtown Lake Placid north of Marcy Road. The restaurant is a small log cabin type addition to a larger stone and wood building that has kind of a mountain lodge theme to it. The restaurant sits up off of street level and has a wooden staircase to get to the entrance. It sits right next to a municipal parking lot and across the street from Smoke Signals where we ordered dinner from the night before.
Read more…Blue Line Creamery
2241 Saranac AvenueIce cream for dinner is a thing when you’re on vacation….right?
It was for B most of the week while we were in Lake Placid, NY for the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships at The Olympic Center.
He had eaten at Emma’s Lake Placid Creamery a couple of times then he and J did the Ben & Jerry’s on the north end of downtown one night too.
Our last night in Lake Placid we found ourselves back in the hotel fairly early. I didn’t feel great and J and B were tired of sitting at the rink. L stayed downtown with her friends though. They went to dinner and got ice cream before heading back to The Olympic Center to get their stuff.
The previous nights, I had gone by myself to pick her up but this time, she had a lot of stuff. B still had his competitor badge so he was able to run in at the athlete’s entrance and help her carry bags out to the car.
He didn’t really want to leave the hotel….so we bribed him with ice cream.
We were kind of in a hurry to get back to the arena to get L and neither of us wanted to deal with the downtown crowds. We had been driving past a little walk up ice cream shop every day so I suggested we just stop there.
Blue Line Creamery is on Saranac Avenue at Nash Street on the west side of Lake Placid. The shop on the corner is part of a multi business building that is designed to fit in to the neighborhood around it. They look to have opened in the fall of last year. This spot was an ice cream joint in the past but it was called Mountain Mist Ice Cream which was an off shoot of a long time popular ice cream spot in nearby Saranac Lake.
Read more…Smoke Signals
2489 Main StreetI spent a pretty good chunk of our Wednesday in Lake Placid back in the hotel.
Wednesday was the day most of L’s skates happened at the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships at The Olympic Center. She was done by about 2 PM. She medaled in both of her events so I stuck around the arena to see her get her medals then I asked J if I could go back to the hotel and take a nap.
The kids and J (and to be honest, me too) wanted to stick around and watch the Junior International Free Dance and Senior International Rhythm Dances. I was bummed because I was really curious to see how the Rhythm and Waltz was going to work this year but I know I’ll get many chances to see it over the next few months.
I took about a three hour nap and at about the time I woke up, I got a text messages from J asking if I’d come pick her and B up. They had watched the Senior rhythm and were ready to call it a night. The hotel was only a few minutes from The Olympic Center so I put on shoes and went and picked them.
We got back to the hotel and started talking about dinner. Neither of us really wanted to go sit down anywhere but we were both kind of hungry.
The thing we noticed, that neither of us realized, is that northern New York seems to be a hot bed for BBQ. There were several places in Lake Placid and several places we passed on the way from Watertown to Lake Placid that had BBQ. We decided to pick one that had online ordering then I was going to head out to grab it.
We picked Smoke Signals in kind of the middle of downtown Lake Placid on Main Street just north of Marcy Road. The restaurant is a two story building that kind of looks like an Alpine Lodge. The space used to be Alpine Mall with shops and smaller restaurants right on Mirror Lake. At some point before 2014, Smoke Signals took over the space but kept the Lodge motif on the exterior.
Read more…Bazzi’s Pizzeria
2536 Main StreetWednesday at the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships was L’s day to skate. B was done for the week and he could just hang out with his friend from Florida he gets to see like once a year.
L’s schedule was somewhat compact for the day. Her first event was at 8 am and the last started around 1 PM. She surprised herself and podiumed in that first event so I hung around The Olympic Center for a while to see her get her medal.
I wasn’t really feeling very good so I kind of just kept to myself and sat in the stands during the break. There was other skating going on and it was nice and cool in the arena. It was surprisingly humid all week in Lake Placid and it could be uncomfortable outside.
I started to get hungry though and didn’t really want a burger from Roamers Cafe. I decided to venture out. There was still a pizza place not too far away that J and L had been raving about for the past year.
Bazzi’s Pizzeria is on Main Street on the south end of downtown Lake Placid across the street from the Golden Arrow Resort. The restaurant is one of several businesses on the main floor of a large three story brick building that has winter sports icons along the roofline. There are a few picnic tables out front and these were the tables we used earlier in the week when we got breakfast at Soulshine Bagel. The exterior has kind of a lodge feel to it which is on theme in the mountains.
Read more…Roamers Cafe & Bar
2634 Main StreetThe second day of the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships was a pretty long one for us. B finished up the one event he started Monday night and he had both segments of his second event in the afternoon. L also had the first segment of one of her events and a practice for her third event.
J and L walked around at lunch time but I stayed and hung out at the arena. To be honest, I was curious to watch some of the younger ice dance pairs. My kids both do solo ice dance so I’ve never really seen how the younger kids do pairs patterns.
I didn’t really feel like walking anywhere for lunch when I got done with that. I walked out of the 1980 Rink and in to the main upstairs lobby area. I saw that the cafe was open and figured now was as good of a time as any to to grab a burger from there.
Roamers Cafe & Bar is inside The Olympic Center in downtown Lake Placid. It’s in the part of the building the connects the 1980 Herb Brooks Arena to the 1932 Jack Shea Arena. The main part of the cafe is kind of more like a concession stand it butts up to the 1980 rink. There are a couple of windows along the space that doubles as the kitchen. One of them is a pick up window while the one closest to the door that leads to the balcony outside is the order window.
Read more…Ere’s Pizza
2439 Main Street, Unit 3B and I left The Olympic Center in Lake Placid to get dinner after his first night of competition at the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships but we ran in to a hiccup. The restaurant we were heading towards closed just as we were walking up the street.
He was fine with ice cream for dinner so I took him over Emma’s Lake Placid Creamery. He got ice cream and we headed back to the Olympic Center to watch some of his teammates in the Junior division.
I watched for a while but the longer I sat there, the hungrier I got. I didn’t want to go to a sit down restaurant that late because everything was pretty packed. B said he would actually eat a pizza but he didn’t want just one slice like L had been getting him from a slice place downtown (blog on that place coming soon).
There are quite a few pizza places near downtown Lake Placid but I only found one with the most important feature.
I will do almost anything to avoid calling in a pizza order. It happens occasionally but there was nothing that really jumped out as me as that made me want it bad enough to that. So the place with online ordering got my business.
Ere’s Pizza was that place. It’s located on Main Street kind of on the north end of downtown Lake Placid north of Hayes Street. The restaurant is mostly below street level. It shares a building with The Haus boutique hotel and Saratoga Olive Oil Company. The pizza restaurant is down is underneath the olive oil shop with it’s entrance leading out to a small green space and public band shell right on the edge of Mirror Lake. There are a couple of long balconies that run the length of the building for outdoor dining that make up part of the aesthetic of the building.
Read more…Emma’s Lake Placid Creamery
2507 Main StreetWhat’s a vacation without ice cream….right?
It’s kind of a nightly occurrence in a resort town Lake Placid.
We were in town for the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships at The Olympic Center. We’re calling this “our vacation” this year because it was a family trip to a town that most people would vacation in. Yeah, we spent a lot of time at the rink but we also had a little bit of relaxing time outside of the historic venue.
The first kid to compete was B on Monday night. He only had the first half of his event. The second part of it was the next morning. Once he was done and changed, he wanted to go get something to eat then get back to watch some friends in the event that was happening after his.
He and I left The Olympic Center and started walking north to find someplace we could quickly grab a burger. There is a spot just a few blocks away but they were putting up the closing sign as we walked up…at 7 PM….in a resort town with literally hundreds of people walking the streets at night.
He didn’t want pizza again and any other place would have required us to sit down for a meal. He also wasn’t interested in that. He asked if he could just have ice cream for dinner. I figured what the hell. It is vacation, right?
We headed over to Emma’s Lake Placid Creamery on Main Street and Grace Way in downtown Lake Placid. This ice cream shop is absolutely the place to be on a summer night in downtown Lake Placid. It’s a retro 1950’s style ice cream shop that quite regularly has lines down the street waiting to get in. When we got there around 7:30 PM on Monday night, the line was two storefronts down Main Street but it moves pretty quickly so we got in line.
Read more…Soulshine Bagel
2526 Main StreetThere were several places in Lake Placid that J and L couldn’t want to bring “the boys” to but breakfast was the big one.
We were in Lake Placid for the week for the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships at The Olympic Center. This year, it was a family trip. Last year, J and L decided to go kind of last minute. I couldn’t get the week of and they had just taken B to a competition in Dallas. He wasn’t going to do very well and since it was an expensive competition, they decided to leave him home with me.
This year, B is more than competitive, he’s one of the best skaters in his level in the country. L is too. I planned for a year to have the vacation time available so we all packed up and headed to the Adirondacks for the week.
Monday was the first day of competition but it didn’t start until 5 PM. L had a practice skate around 1 PM and we wanted to walk around downtown Lake Placid for a while.
When we got out of bed, L was kind of pushing us out the door of our hotel because she couldn’t wait to get to her favorite bagel place.
Soulshine Bagel is on Main Street in downtown Lake Placid. The small bagel shop is on the south end of downtown next to the Grand Adirondack Hotel. The shop is one of many businesses on the bottom floor of a three level building that spans about a half a block. Soulshine is in the spot furthest north and it’s a very narrow building that, like a lot of places in downtown Lake Placid, becomes very crowded very quickly.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 