Tag Archives: Lake George

A Day on Lake George

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A Day on Lake George

A day on Lake George is a day spent in “God’s Country” or so say the locals. I can tell you that in my travels I’ve seen some beautiful places but few reach the level of beauty and tranquility as Lake George. Of course that’s just my opinion. I’m sure the folks water skiing, jet skiing and tubing would have a different description. There’s nothing tranquil about what they are doing roaring around the lake. Still, Lake George wasn’t nicknamed the Queen of American Lakes for nothing.

The lake was originally named the Andia-ta-roc-te by local Native Americans. James Fenimore Cooper in his narrative Last of the Mohicans called it the Horican, after a tribe which may have lived there, because he felt the original name was too hard to pronounce.

The first European visitor to the area, Samuel de Champlain, noted the lake in his journal on July 3, 1609, but did not name it. In 1646, the French Canadian Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues, the first European to view the lake, named it Lac du Saint-Sacrement (Lake of the Holy Sacrament).

But by any name, its beautiful.

Our Day on The Lake

We started our day by picking up the boat at the Sagamore, a resort hotel located in Bolton Landing on Lake George. The Sagamore’s history dates back to the 1880’s. Located on it’s own private Island the main hotel is a nod back to the elegant travels of yesterday.

Casting off from our slip we left the stately Hotel behind us as we headed to one of the many islands on the lake.

Lake George is 32 miles long with somewhere  around 170 islands. 148 of the which are state owned. Many with docks and campsites. Although many of the names of the islands and surrounding mountains were familiar I’d been away too long to recognize many of them.

Some of the surrounding mountains include Black Mountain, Elephant Mountain, Pilot Knob, Prospect Mountain, Shelving Rock, Sleeping Beauty Mountain, Sugarloaf Mountain, and the Tongue Mountain Range. Some of the lake’s more famous bays are Basin Bay, Kattskill Bay, Northwest Bay, Oneida Bay, and Silver Bay.

The lake is distinguished by “The Narrows”, an island-filled narrow section (approximately five miles) that is bordered on the west by the Tongue Mountain Range and the east by Black Mountain

All The Way to the End of the Lake

We picked up sandwiches at the little store on Glen Island where the ranger station is located. We cruised around until we located a vacant island with a dock where we stopped for lunch.

During our explorations we passed a huge eagle nest, empty today but looking in good shape. Eagles use the same nest over and over. They just keep adding on.

 

The afternoon was spend riding up toward Ticonderoga, the northern end of the lake. We stayed away from the southern end of the lake because there’s where Lake George Village is located with it’s Million Dollar Beach and where most of the tourists will be. On our return we spotted the cruise ship Mohican  on the far side of the lake.

Northwest Bay

We ended the day in Northwest Bay.  It quiet beauty under scores my earlier comment. Northwest Bay Brook was tranquil.

A few kayakers and fishermen but not water skiers. The brook was quiet.

Road Trip! Time for a Drive Vacation

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Road Trip!

It’s a summer drive vacation aka road trip.  Covid has put a real damper on travel. I canceled my vacations for this year. I’m waiting for the pandemic scare to subside. I hear plane fares are going to be at an all time low this fall. I also hear that lots of flights may be canceled or consolidated and some airlines may fail. But someone with my wanderlust can only be slowed down so long. So even with arthritic joints and a Covid 15 weight gain, it was time to do something. My choice…ROAD TRIP! God bless my brother. He gave me an excuse to travel. I decided to go visit him in Lake George, New York.

Camping 2020 Style

Road Trip began with a drive to the Northway aka route 87, the north-south highway through eastern New York. I picked it up from the the turnpike (Route 90) in Albany.  All in all it was about a 3.5 hour drive from my house to Exit 23 for Diamond Point/ Warrensburg. Of course I went to exit 24. That was the exit if I wanted to go to my brother’s house or to our “old homestead”. Old habits die hard I guess. Anyway I had to turn around to get to exit 23 which was my destination. We were going to spend the week camping 2020 style. No tents for us. We had an RV to use. 

Communication is everything

Of course I got my wires crossed. Got to love texting. You try to keep everything short and the result is we get totally twisted up. Because I’d gone to the wrong exit my brother thought I was meeting him at his house but by the time he replied I’d turned around and was headed back to the correct exit – exit 23.  He said come on to the house so I said ok I’m just getting gas. He thought I was in Bolton the town on the lake when I was really in Warrensburg.  I finally found my way back to exit 24 and then it was just a hop, skip and jump to his house. We then caravan-ed back to where I started at exit 23. We are still laughing about that.

Puzzle update:

Here’s where I left off on the puzzle before my road trip. Making slow but steady progress

 

I Love NY

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Meanwhile Back at the countdown of the states…

Yes! New York State, not the city although I have been to New York City several times.

I have to check off New York State because that’s where I grew up. The old homestead is right in the heart of the Adirondacks.

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When I was growing up the town of Bolton was a little place with only one stop light. We joked that there were more bars than churches and for a little town we had a lot of churches, Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist.

Our school wasn’t a one room but it was a one building, kindergarten through 12. The size of my class changed a little through the years but most of the folks I graduated with had been in my class from the day I started in kindergarten. Final count of graduates…27.

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I didn’t learn to ride a bike until I moved to Massachusetts as an adult. I grew up in the country and I had a horse. Why would I want to pedal up and down those hills when my horse could do the work?

We also had cows and pigs, sheep and goats and chickens as well as my horse. I learned to feed the animals, groom them and muck out stalls. In the fall we butchered some of the animals and my father, and eventually my brothers, went hunting for deer. We all loved venison. Once Lake George froze over we had lake perch to eat. Ice fishing was popular and to this day yellow perch is a favorite dish.

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We went tubing on the Schroon River before tubing was popular.

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We cut the tall grass in the field…haying we called it….first with teams of draft horses and then later with a tractor. We loaded the hay into wagons with pitchforks.

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We didn’t sit inside watching TV. We went outside to play and roamed the fields and woods using our imaginations to avoid the “Indians” or search for “fairy rings “.

I rode the Ticonderoga and the Mini Ha Ha, cruise ships on beautiful Lake George.

august 063I worked with the photographer for the Sagamore  Hotel where I witnessed elaborate dinners and dance lessons on the portico.

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Eventually I had to grow up (as much as I ever have…I have a strong streak of Peter Pan Syndrome) and headed to Albany, NY to attend college at SUNY Albany. That was at the end of the 60’s and beginning of the 70’s. The “Free Love” Movement and Hippies predominated. Then the Kent State tragedy cast a pall over the riotous college atmosphere and I headed back to the country.

My visits to New York City have been short. It isn’t my favorite place. I’ve been to stage shows on Broadway and stood in Times Square. I’ve been in Grand Central Station and some of the museums but most of the time my trips are quick hits…run in, do what I must, leave.

Heading off to the west I’ve made it to Buffalo and Niagara Falls. I’ve been there twice but it was many years ago. I’d like to go back again.

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Recently I was at a travel show and met a group of travel agents pushing Lake George. I picked up the brochures and by the time I finished reading them I was ready to take my next vacation right back where I grew up.

Glens Falls hosts a Balloon Festival every Fall. I went in 2012.

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Missed it this year but am planning for 2014. I haven’t even touched on all there is to do. New York is a big state. There’s a wine section in the Finger Lakes Region and caves to explore.

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The “I love NY ” slogan is very fitting. If you go, you’ll love it too.

2 for 2

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Since it’s Sunday I thought I’d take a break from the Alaska story to brag a little bit. While we were in Alaska and unable to obtain a copy of the Boston Sunday Globe, another of my pictures got published. It was the Sunday May 19th issue. The picture appeared in the travel section under the feature called The Sight. That is the 2nd picture they have accepted. I managed to get some back issues so here it is.

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Just had to share the news 🙂 Tomorrow I’ll start telling you about Skagway.

Moonglow and Fireworks

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Traffic is crawling, stop and go,stop and go.  Ahead we can see 3 enormous balloons bobbing and weaving. Sometimes they wink out. Sometimes they look like they are about to fall over before we hear the whoosh and see them stand tall again. It seems like we aren’t making much progress. Street parking is out of the question. When we spot a place without a car it’s because there’s a pile of dirt or a boulder blocking the spot.

Pedestrians crossed  freely in front of the crawling line of traffic. Inside I was holding my breath waiting for my sister to tell me this was ridiculous.

We’d been at the airport until about 6pm but the wind never died down enough for the hot air balloons to take off. When we left they were just spread out like lovely colored bed spreads.

Our mistake was not coming straight up to Lake George. We detoured over to George and Kelly’s house. We were just going to make a quick stop. As usually happens when you connect with relatives, especially some you don’t see often, you get to visiting and our quick stop turned into 30-40 minutes…just like that! Not that I’m complaining. I enjoyed the visit too.

A half hour drive to Lake George and it was already 7:30. Moonglow was at 8pm according to the published schedule. But if 8pm was the start time, what were we slowly approaching?

Finally we passed the park and the balloons and found a rough parking lot. $6.00 to park . Grabbing camera, tripod and folding chairs we headed back in the direction we’d just come along with a steady stream of others anxious to see the brightly lit balloons.

To my surprise we easily  got in the front row with plenty of room even with the crowd! I set up as fast as I could in the dark. It was hard to judge where the balloons were in the frame when the lights went out but I did the best I could. A little girl with a glow stick was running around near us. I was pretty sure she was in the frame on some of the pictures but it was hard to tell. I wasn’t going to tell her to stop. She was having way too much fun!

Blue Light Trails from Glow Stick

The balloons were tethered so other than the lights there wasn’t much to see. At about 8pm one of the balloons suddenly began deflating. Then the others began to follow.  The show was over! We can only assume there was a misprint on the schedule because it definitely said it was to start at 8..not end. Oh well, at least we got to see a bit of the “Moon glow”.

We headed back to the car to try to beat the rush. I wanted a couple of “night shots” of the lights from the shore reflecting in the lake before we left. When we were almost back to the parking lot I set the tripod back up and began to focus when BANG! the fireworks started.

We stood there on the sidewalk and watched the display of lights fly up into the sky over the lake.

It was a great way to finish up the night. We hustled off to the car before the finale because we just knew the traffic would be bad if we waited. Even with the head start it was still bumper to bumper and “dodge ’em” with the pedestrians. Still I’m really glad we made the effort to go. It was  beautiful.

Saturday night they want to have a 40 balloon “Moonglow” at the Warren County Airport. I bet that will really be something to see.