Travelling in a car together, sitting in airports and airplanes together, and sleeping in the same bed together, Isy & I mostly gave up on trying to keep her from catching whatever was wrong with me.

Sure enough, by day 6 she was struggling.

This left us spending another night in Gatineau which ate up our planned night in Ogdensburg, New York. We still had to go through Ogdensburg though, but the only stop was a quick trip to the waterfront where we crunched over icy snow to get out to the Ogdensburg Harbor Lighthouse.

This lighthouse marks the confluence of Ogdensburg's Oswegatchie River and the St. Lawrence River, standing at this point across from Prescott Ontario since 1871. Replacing an earlier 1834 structure, the new lighthouse was built from limestone, with its height being increased with a brick extension sometime before 1900.

The Ogdensburg Harbor Lighthouse was decommissioned and sold into private ownership in 1964. The Roethal family extensively renovated and repaired the light for use as a summer home, even going so far as contacting lighthouse organizations for needed help with maintaining such a structure.

For all of this trouble, Ogdensburg still charged the Roethal's high taxes on the property, even as it's an iconic sight that holds great value to the area. The son would apply for a demolition permit to bring attention to these high taxes, but instead go forth with the dream of his late father, relighting the Ogdensburg Harbor Lighthouse in 2011 and getting it back on the official U.S. Coast Guard aids to navigation list in 2012 (as a private aid).

As we walked up to the summer home, there was a No Trespassing sign, but it was plenty close enough to get a good picture and count seeing the lighthouse. I appreciated that they made these concessions for lighthouse visitors.

Even though Ogdensburg is easily the most prominent city around, we found the St. Lawrence County Courthouse twenty minutes away in the medium-sized community of Canton.

I was pretty excited for our drive though a new portion of New York State, seeing as I've always loved my passing travels down by Syracuse and that other time I was in Plattsburgh; but man did we go through some rural, heavily-forested areas today.

We were up near Adirondack Park, a giant forest preserve that dominates the northern portion of upstate New York. Along the way, we went through very few villages or towns, although I did like the look of gritty and weathered Tupper Lake.

Instead of staying in Tupper Lake, we continued on to Saranac Lake and our AirBNB reservation. And without staying in Ogdensburg last night, I didn't have a chance to research any bars or eateries up here in the Tri-Lakes region.

The surrounding lands were sleepy and many businesses were closed for the night, so we decided to go with the first restaurant we came across, which felt like an old school Italian joint out of a mob film. And where we were just trying to make sure we didn't go hungry tonight, we instead left with pasta leftovers from their insanely large portions.

Nothing like a gigantic plate of eggplant parm when you're only looking for a late night top up, haha.

Our AirBNB was in the basement suite of a large, handsome home. Isy still wasn't feeling good at all, so I stayed in at night and went for a walk in the early morning.

Saranac Lake has some cool history that I was excited to see. It comes from the early belief that tuberculosis was cured with cool alpine air and spending time outside; leading New Yorkers to come up here and build special houses with big sun porches and extensive additions.

Following his tuberculosis diagnosis, one man that came up here was Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau. He would spend as much time as possible outside and eventually beat the disease.

Moving up to Saranac Lake permanently, Dr. Trudeau established the Saranac Laboratory for the Study of Tuberculosis. His first patients were two factory working girls from NYC, who he put up in the small red "cure cottage" that still stands today. This is because Trudeau believed that the open air and sunlight needed in curing tuberculosis was more easily found in cottage settings instead of in large sanatoriums.

Saranac Lake would become a world-renowned centre for tuberculosis treatment, leading more and more infected people to come up here. New "cure cottages" were built and old homes added extensive sun porches with sliding doors so the sick could get at least 8 hours a day of sunshine and fresh air.

Many of these cure cottages still stand today and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

I really should have printed out directions for the listed cure cottages, but there were still plenty of awesome houses in this Helen Hill Historic District.

Saranac Lake is one of the few places up here that's big enough to have a legitimate skatepark and it looked pretty good in my pre-trip research. Unfortunately, this area of New York also gets some pretty solid winters.

I thought of possibly shovelling, but the numerous "NO BIKES" signs gave me hesitation as I didn't want to use up vacation hours shovelling, just to have some scooter parent or skateboarder call the police on me once I could actually ride.

As it turns out, I saw pro-BMXer Charlie Crumlish post a clip from here a few months back & he said no one gave him any problems (although no one else was around).

Afterwards we drove up to the liquor store in Rouses Point, but it didn't have the greatest selection, so we popped back down to Champlain and picked up some Yuenglings at a strip plaza discount liquor mart in order to bring some back to Canada.

Gassing up and grabbing one last Dunks coffee afterwards, I moved the car while Isy went inside, and then lo and behold, behind the gas station was a rundown building with peeling paint and no one around.

This was the Mir-o-Mar Outlet Mall, which opened in 1993 to take advantage of the powerful Canadian dollar of the time and Champlain's proximity to Quebec and especially Montreal.

This place reminded me of when Trump said Canadians come to the United States to buy and smuggle shoes back, saying “they buy shoes and then they wear them. They scuff them up. They make them sound old or look old,” and tons of people clowned on him. Except he was right and it was embarrassing to see other Canadians acting like know-it-alls when they didn't grow up in a border town or know what they were talking about.

Some guy in the comments said he grew up in Montreal and always had to head down here as no one had size 14s in Canada. My Quebec man!

This was my first time exploring an abandoned outlet mall, so we were both surprised and a bit confused with how there were doors and entryways between every store, leaving us to never go back outside.

While we thought this was because the mall was now empty, it turns out this was actually a special feature of Mir-o-Mar and French doors led from store to store when it was open. One would imagine this was nice during the wintertime up here.

This also made it feel like we walked for miles and miles, but I guess it was also the nervousness of being in here, because in reality we only walked about a kilometer through something like 10 or 15 business spaces.

There are some great public-access video segments regarding the opening and closing of this mall:

Grand Opening (8-27-93).

Hour and a half update (6-29-94).

Closing (9-9-2000).

Leaving the outlet mall & trying to get some bike riding in, things were drier up here so we spent about an hour driving around Plattsburgh looking for something to ride - regrettably passing on the only thing we saw in Plattsburgh (some tiny embankments by the Plattsburgh Airport), while both Champlain and Rouses Point weren't big enough to have much in terms of staircases, embankments or handrails.

I was actually surprised how little there was to ride in Plattsburgh.

The weather seemed to get even better as we approached Montreal, and curving around the southern edge of the metro area, I knew about the Longueuil Skatepark and found everything dry outside of the bowl.

Some skater was actually trying to make the bowl rideable too, hacking away with a small plastic shovel, while 15 scooter kids dropped in in an infinite loop, racing super close to the poor skateboarder and using the bowl like a drop-in and a fly-out.

Bless that skateboarder's patience, because I would not have it in me.

Also of note, after only riding some busy bank in Gatineau and that Tigre Geant, I did one of the better things I've ever done here in Longueuil. And it was all because of that patient skateboarder, since the scooter kids were mostly out of my way in the small street section :)

Another reason for stopping in Longueuil was the Colisée Jean-Béliveau.

This arena is similar to the Moose Jaw Civic Centre, which was a pillar of junior hockey with a great design that led to it being dubbed the "Crushed Can". Sadly, I missed out on ever needing a reason to go to Moose Jaw after it was demolished in 2012.

As I don't know of any other similar arenas, this has always made me sort of want to stop at the unique & brutalist arena here in Longueuil.

I always had this arena on the list of "maybe someday" stops, but I was blown away when I walked around the beautiful outside and then the fascinating inside.

"Seeing a game at Le Colisée Jean-Béliveau" is now definitely on the to-do list.

I thought it might be a bit silly to start attending games in the league below the QMJHL, but today would change all that. I now need to get back for a LHJAAAQ Collège Français de Longueuil game, sit in these old benches, with the wooden ceiling partly in my view, as I look down the steep incline towards the ice surface.

Originally the next stop was going to be Victoriaville, where the QMJHL playoffs were continuing in a city I quite enjoy that's also home to an indoor skatepark.

Except that Shawinigan had now tied the series with Rouyn-Noranda at 2. Rouyn-Noranda was the #1 team in the whole country and Shawinigan now had a chance at a historic upset. This was especially remarkable in the QMJHL where teams trade off all assets for one single shot at a championship, managing their teams like fantasy hockey managers.

So instead of Victoriaville we kept driving north, back up to Shawinigan. Cutting through the Eastern Townships, the sun came out and we went through some flat farmland with the odd farmhouse. Finally I had found the landscape I've been looking for around Quebec! Shawinigan instead of Victoriaville was paying off already!

Isy was now definitely not feeling well, so I was on my own in Shawinigan.

I left her at the Auberge La Rocaille motel, then headed out of the Grand-Mere section of town and down to the arena, where I couldn't find a parking space anywhere close. I eventually settled on a spot 19 light years away, but raced and passed people as I hustled to get into the Centre Gervais Auto.

Heading through the doors and picking up my will call tickets, I snatched up a beer and poutine and made my way to the glass seats I'd purchased; all the while watching screens and seeing that the game was already on and the lowly Shawinigan Cataractes were up 1-0 and looking good. I could hear the crowd rocking from the concourse.

But then as I sorted it out with some guy sitting in my seat who then took Isy's seat after I told him I was only alone because my girlfriend was sick ("yeah sure bro"), I sat down with my food and almost immediately, a thunderous check broke through the glass and sent shards and chunks 10 rows up into the crowd.

The game was now in a delay.

Fixing the pane of glass took forever and Shawinigan looked flat after they returned from their dressing room. Rouyn-Noranda would then take over and cruise to an easy win.

(Rouyn-Noranda would then win the next game and eliminate Shawinigan. They then swept Victoriaville, swept Rimouski, beat Halifax in 6, then went on to win the Memorial Cup for all of junior hockey, besting Guelph, Halifax again & Prince Albert.)

About the most exciting thing at the Shawinigan game was this professional photographer setting up shop beside me - where I wondered if I should let him use my 9-year-old, $320, fixed lens, slow, Fuji bridge camera, after those goobers at the fucking Calgary Saddledome told me I wasn't allowed to bring said camera in because it takes food out of photographers' mouths. Never mind the $1500 iPhones and Samsungs that 98% of the population have nowadays.

Anywayyyy, it was straight back to the motel afterwards as we had to get up early to beat a coming ice storm.

Pulling on to the bare highway around 5am under a full moon, Isy fell asleep almost immediately and I listened to the radio on volume 3 or 4, loving my peaceful drive as we successfully beat the ice back to Montreal Trudeau Airport.