5. Day – On the way to Lake Placid

Our hotel
The entrance to our "house"
Lake Mirror

More than 670 miles (nearly 1100 KM) lay before us on the way from Willard/Ohio to Lake Placid/New York. On our route all around Lake Erie till the town which was a venue of the Winter Olympics in 1980 we went by the US states Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. Linda drove, I was the navigator. Before we left at Linda’s home we had printed out our route with Google Maps. And now there I sat, map and route plan on the lap, and piloted Linda through the USA. To find our way in America is very easy. All streets, also the smallest country roads, are numbered. The street numbers are clear to read in signs along the way. If one approaches a crossroad, already a 100 meters before it’s indicated which streets branch out here. So that one always turns into the right direction, all roads are marked with the direction in which they go. For instance "East", "South", "West" and "North". In this manner it is almost impossible to get lost or to turn wrong. 
In addition, our Google Map plan still had a pleasant specific feature: It gave the distance which we had to put back on a street, not only in miles, but also in minutes to go.  A look at the clock told me, when I had to pay attention because of a crossroad approaching at which we had to change the Interstate or the county street. To go on American Interstates, rather needs getting used to. Because here you may overtake another car on the right and on the left. The maximum speed amounts to 65 miles (scarcely more than 100 km/h), except in building sites – only 55 miles may be driven there. Trucks go almost as fast. Because it was Saturday, nevertheless, not too many were on the move. The streets are relatively bad – everywhere deep pot holes and in parts road pavements consisting of concrete paving slabs. Really good are only the "Toll-Roads", so street upkeep for the toll fee is raised. And there are a lot of Toll roads in America. However, the fees are not by far as high as for example in France.  For the longest distance we had to pay just 6.50 dollars. To Buffalo we drove down towards Lake Erie – a lake of inconceivable size. Up to the horizon one saw in all directions there nothing but water. In Watertown we left the Interstate – and with it, it seemed, also the „civilized world“. We had landed in "The wilderness" again. It went straight through woods, over bendy streets, uphill and downhill. Almost you could think we are in the Black Forest. Predominantly Conifers and Pine lined the street, in between a lot of moorland and countless small and bigger lakes. The outside temperature sank by nearly 10 degrees, and soon it started to rain. We were in the Adirondacks, the mountain segment and forest segment of the state New York which is famous for his granite-containing rock (which is not used here, nevertheless), for its extensive forests, It’s more than 1600 lakes and It’s rough, humid climate. We experienced this now on our own body. Far and wide no houses or settlements were in view, the rain beat down on the car, and our mobile phone didn`t work No Network!
 If your car has a breakdown here, you are in big trouble. We drove kilometer after kilometer beside the woods, and Linda told me that in the Adirondacks not only wolves and coyotes live, but also black bears. Excellent! I was glad, in any case, when we finally approached Lake Placid and were back in civilization again after a total of 11 hours "on the road".
Our room in the Crown Plaza turned out "team's accommodation". Two big rooms with a television in each, a kitchenette, a big bath. In the first room stood two King Size beds (they are from about 1.40 meter wide). Each offered place for two people. In the second room stood a "Queen's Size bed", the biggest bed which I have ever seen. It was about 2.50 meter wide – here four people could have slept at the same time. Tired from the long tour we soon fell in our "gigantic beds". The next day, we wanted to be rested, because we planned to meet Andrea and Eric who had emigrated with their three Dane bitches in spring 2009 from Holland to the USA. One of these bitches is Voce, the blue daughter of Striker and Raffles.

This day Linda and I had looked forward to we were very pleased. We could observe, nevertheless, today not only completely the show events (very relaxed) – we would also see Vica and Kim again after two years, the daughter of Striker and Raffles who lives in Kentucky. Kim, Vica’s owner, had driven three hours up to the show with her friend Michelle to meet Linda and me. We spent a relaxed day with marvelous summer weather and, besides the ring although we sat in the shade all of us got sunburned. Vica will start her show career the next month with Kim showing her for the first time out. She has developed into a wonderful bitch; however, she has for American standards a head that's to short. But Jeff is optimistic that she will go her way and gain the Champion title. Brother Venco who lives in Finland has, already won two Champion titles …
In the evening Jane and Phil Gray, the parents of Patrice (the breeders of the "Owlwatch" kennel and „mummy and dad“of Flyer) joined us. they specially drove up to Ohio to see us both In their new Smart car, and are now judges in the AKC (American Kennel club) and judge not only Danes, but also whippets (Whippets they also breed very successfully). We sat in comfortable circle together and, besides had a lot to laugh about, not in the least because of Michelle and the amusing photographer Phil, not forgetting Jeff who always has a trick or two up his sleeve they made us laugh a lot. And talking about breeding of course again.  If Dane people are together, the main topic is the breeding of these gentle giants. In front of our Motel we ended the evening talking with Donald and Dianne Westermeyer whose harlequin bitch had become "Winners Bitch" the day before under Linda, and the Irishman now living in the USA Neill O ‘Sullivan and his niece, He is a Geneticist and knows the Dane’s in America inside and out, and deals with genetics and the Merle gene.