We’re Still in New York?

When you think about New York you automatically think of skyscrapers and Broadway lights and a city that never sleeps. But if you drive just a few hours north of NYC, you might think you are out west in Wyoming or Montana. Welcome to New York State and more importantly, the Adirondacks! The Mohawk Indians once occupied this area and Adirondack is Mohican for Porcupine- an animal that may eat bark. After the American Revolutionary War, the land was given to the State of New York who promptly sold it to pay for war debts at pennies an acre. With around 6 million acres of land, this area of upstate New York is not a national park but a series of Unesco protected communities and towns that are set on 300 beautiful lakes & ponds, valleys, and cliffs. The Adirondacks is bigger than Yellowstone, The Everglades, Glacier and Grand Canyon Parks all put together.

After stocking up at a local Fresh Market, our first stop was on the Hudson River right outside of the Adirondacks. We explored the river on our bikes and Douglas BBQ’d on our new fold up compact grill. Douglas commented that the campground restrooms were the cleanest he has seen during our travels.

Our next stop was the WildCenter in the town of Tupper Lake to view an art installation called I-Forest. Artist Peter M. Wyer has created a series of speakers in the forest hike that allows you to experience different pieces of music with a nature backdrop. The air smells like fresh pine trees and once you step into the installation, it really does feel like it is just you and the trees.

Driving by Lake Saranac…

We’ve done a very poor job of planning for this leg of our trip, well actually, we’ve done very little planning period and have opted to just go with the flow. State Parks and National Parks are always our first pick for campsites because they are usually in a prime location, the price is right and we believe in supporting them. But what happens when you don’t plan ahead during the 2nd to last week of summer break, is you wind up scrambling for a private campground. We were lucky enough to get the last campsite at Little Wolf Campground on Little Pond, Lake Tupper. We had no idea what to expect but we lucked out as you can see by the beautiful sunset pics. If we had planned ahead, we might have gotten the campsites directly on the beach!

A short drive from Lake Saranac and Lake Tupper is Lake Placid, made famous by hosting the Winter Olympics. We enjoyed the scenic 2.7 mile walk around the lake with the White Mountains as backdrop.

We were looking for recommendations for our next stop and Douglas found a beach campground on Lake Champlain, Cumberland State Park. Again, we got one of the last few campsites available and the place was packed with families enjoying the last week of summer break. We noticed that a large majority of the families were speaking French and were probably from Montreal which is less than an hour north. In fact, T-Mobile prompted me that I had used all of my roaming time in Canada! Maybe the strongest towers are in another country. Bizarre! There must have been a hundred kite surfers along the beach in the afternoon. The wind made Lake Champlain seem more like an ocean with “white caps” breakings.