Greatly recommended experience

Are you driving to Burlington, VT for the Vermont City Marathon?  Or Schenectady or Albany, NY for the Mohawk Hudson Marathon? Or (far closer) to Schroon Lake, NY for the Adirondack Marathon? And are you a geek? Well, then, I have the perfect diversion for you to do during your race weekend.

Yes, I know, I'm wearing a TNG uniform on the TOS set. So what? Haven't you heard of time travel? This is totally a Star Trek-plausible scenario.

I was up in Vermont for my friends' (Mike & Stacey) daughter's (River) graduation from Castleton University. (OK, fine, it's now officially Vermont State University (Castleton campus) -- sore subject for the recent grads the last three years.) And in place of making a donation in my name to a Boston-based charity (since I didn't make it onto a Boston Marathon charity team for which they could do that), they bought me a set tour with photo package of the ST:TOS set. Neat! 

Based in the shell of a former Safeway supermarket in Ticonderoga, NY, this set tour is absolutely great! A superfan decided that he wanted to re-create the set to Star Trek (The Original Series), and managed to not only get all of the blueprints with which to build the entire set of the Enterprise, but also LOTS of the original set pieces and/or recreations of them.

Walking through the hallways and the rooms is truly amazing. You definitely feel like you're there.

From teleporting to another planet

to being in an intense meeting in the conference room

to needing to get examined in Sick Bay

to climbing into a Jeffries tube as if to fix some circuitry that was going haywire

you see it all.

Heck, you even get to see something never seen in any of the original series (or subsequent ones, I think) if you... have to go:

Our hour-long tour included plenty of stories from the days of filming to the many famous visitors to their set tour (some of which just might be there if you go on the right day) and, in our case, also included lots of photos. (No videos are permitted, by visitors or the tour guides, per the arrangement with Paramount, so we only get to keep in our memory the "live" sound of the Red Alert klaxon, or the transporter beam being activated -- so cool!)

Ever wanted to work at Kirk's desk?

Or take a look inside his bedroom?

Or visit Engineering?

Yep, you get to do it.

Lots more photos taken, but you get the drift. Use your marathoning as an excuse to drive out of your way to visit the set. Or don't even bother concealing your geek flag (freak flag?) and just make this a central part of your trip. Whatever!

Oh, and, yes... this is THAT Ticonderoga: