Lake George Bike Ride

While son, Karl and a friend, Samantha, along with their eight kids were at the Great Escape amusement park, Carol and I went for a bike ride on a beautiful bike path adjoining the Lake George RV Park, where we're staying.

This beautiful trail follows the route of an old colonial path, corduroy toll road, electric trolley route, old road and now is a bike path. On this comfortably sunny day, we had a splendid ride on a 12 foot wide paved trail with mown grass shoulders. The trail is nearly level so the ride along a meandering brook in the cool forest shade was wonderful!

Of historical note, this very place was the site of a major battles on September 8, 1755 between the British Colonialists and the French with their respective Abenaki, Iroquois and Mohawk allies. The trail has historic markers briefly explaining those September battles known as the Battle of Lake George, a bloody month indeed.

I realize I know little to nothing of the pre-Revolutionary battles between the British and the French for eastern North America, part of the broader conflict known as the Seven Years War.

While researching some of this, it struck me that only two decades later American Colonials were fighting the British and Loyalists again, with French assistance. So the British in North America must have been somewhat war-weary which may have made our revolutionary struggle a bit 'easier.'

It also struck me that last year when we visited Fort Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, that the Seven Years War raged there too with the fort changing hands on more than one occasion with the resulting forced exodus of the Acadians to other parts of North America, including Louisiana.

It seems we in the U.S. have been at war ever since the settling of the country...a trait shared by most of mankind, it seems. Power and ideologies are forever violently clashing. That is the nature of Man.