Living Our Bucket List Life: The Adirondacks: Lake Placid (July 2019)

My spouse and I took a driving trip to the Adirondack region of upstate New York over the July Fourth long holiday weekend in 2019. On the way there, we stopped in Lake George to have an al fresco lunch at the Pavilion at the Sagamore Resort. In Lake Placid, we stayed at the Hampton Inn and Suites, one of the nicest Hampton Inns we’ve ever seen! (It was the “Taj Mahal” of Hampton Inns!) We arrived in the afternoon just in time for the town’s annual holiday parade, and we were lucky to score good viewing seats on the patio at the Great Adirondack Brewing Company. That night, we ate dinner at the Pickled Pig (the mac-and-cheese was “tremendous”!), and afterwards, we stopped at the lakeside (with the rest of the town!) to watch the fireworks. In the morning, we planned a full day of sightseeing, including a winding drive on the Whiteface Veteran’s Memorial Highway to the lookout on the top, followed by a ride on the Cloudsplitter Gondola to the summit of Whiteface. We also drove to Saranac Lake, where we ate lunch on the back deck at the Scullery at Grizle-Ts. Back in Lake Placid, we ate dinner in “town” at Jimmy’s 21. The next morning, we had more to see, starting with the Mackenzie-Intervale Ski Jumping Complex (where we watched the aerialists ski jump into a swimming pool). It began to rain as we were departing that site, so we drove to the Lake Placid Lodge, where we had a great lunch on their covered deck of Maggie’s Pub. Afterward, we popped into the Whiteface Lodge to nose around a bit, followed by a quick shopping trip to the Lake Placid Marshalls (which was an unexpected surprise because LP is such a small town, and it didn’t have any other nationally known shops). Back in town, we visited the Olympic Museum before finishing our night with dinner on the deck at the Lake Placid Pub and Brewing Company. Although our time in Lake Placid was over, we made a nice sightseeing stop on the way home at Great Camp Sagamore in Raquette Lake. We had an excellent weekend in the Adirondacks, and we would love to return if it were just a little closer (it was a 6+ hour drive each way).

The Adirondacks

"Upstate New York may be America's best-kept secret," wrote George Meegan, an Englishman who made a seven-year, 19,000-mi trek (ending in 1983) through the Americas, in his account The Longest Walk. The Adirondacks and Thousand Islands region of New York (referred to as the “North Country”) are part of the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park, the largest park in the continental USA. (It is bigger than Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Everglades, and Glacier National Parks combined.) The blue-green, pristine mountain wilderness is dotted with lakes and rivers (primarily Lake George and Lake Champlain to the east, the St. Lawrence River to the north, and Lake Ontario to the west). The secret character of the region came about through disregard. The rugged land, inhospitable soil, and often unmerciful winter conditions sent early American settlers elsewhere for good farmland. Only the east, from Saratoga Springs, just outside the region's southern rim, to Lake Champlain, saw any significant settlement early on. The extended disinterest proved, in the long run, a boon for wilderness lovers. By the 1800s the idea that there was value in the wilderness itself began to gain popular support. Fans as varied as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Teddy Roosevelt discovered the Adirondack wilds and returned praising their virtues. After the publication in 1869 of William H. H. Murray's classic Adventures in the Wilderness, extolling the freshness and purity of the Adirondack air, the area became recognized as a place for recuperation. A couple of decades later, wealthy families discovered the Adirondacks, giving rise to the building of rustic “great camps.” These remote lodges were built of native wood and stone and had a rough-hewn look to them, but they were otherwise spacious and luxurious. Though forgotten for much of the 20th century, the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid sparked renewed interest in the Adirondacks, Lake Placid in particular. The largest city in the region, however, is Watertown (population 27,000), which is in the Thousand Islands area but not on the water. The 1959 opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, connecting the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, prompted modest growth in the smaller cities, as did the opening of Interstate 87 in the 1960s. There are no big cities here, it is the sparseness of civilization that visitors seem to enjoy most about the region. Hiking trails and a plethora of lakes and rivers throughout the region offer plenty of opportunities to explore. In fall, when the leaves change color, the great expanses of forested land make for one of nature's most dramatic spectacles.

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