While driving through the Adirondacks in upstate New York the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, the thing that struck me the most was the lack of other travelers! Wasn't I just a few hours away from our nation's largest metropolitan area? Wasn't it a holiday weekend? Wasn't the weather absolutely gorgeous? So where is everybody? I concluded that many people like to have the mental picture of a weekend in the Adirondacks in the great outdoors, but they don't really want to deal with the real thing---the long drive to a secluded spot, the fear of no cell-phone coverage, no cable television, no wireless Internet, and YIKES---bugs and snakes and the likes! So we settle for an Adirondack-themed amusement park instead of the actual experience of being in the Adirondacks---it's just too cozy to stay in our old comfort zone. And according to statistics, a smaller percentage of our population is visiting national and state parks each year. And about those famous Adirondack-style chairs shown above in the photos I took. It wasn't until I was outside the boundaries of the park that I ever saw any of them! The houses along the particular highway I traveled through the park, had front porches with lawn chairs made of the familiar aluminum tubing and cloth webbing; or perhaps the molded plastic chairs so prevalent everywhere. Not a single house I saw within the park had an Adirondack chair on the front porch! (perhaps it is just as well; I doubt that the Yankees living in those houses would take too kindly to a hillbilly photographer from one of those states below the Mason-Dixon line, approaching their front porch for a quick shot with her camera!) But if you use visualization for a relaxation technique, and you like to visualize yourself relaxing beside a wooded lake, stretched out in your Adirondack chair, soaking up the great outdoors---go right ahead; and don't worry about being interrupted by other human beings---they are all inside watching "Last of the Mohicans" on television. Miles of smiles! Tricia
