The New New Yorker: Lake Placid/Adirondacks

One of my wishes for this year was to explore this area of the country where we live. This summer I went to East Hampton and Stephen and I just went to Lake Placid, which is in the Adirondacks. It was really beautiful!

We left Friday morning and took the PATH train from WTC to Hoboken, NJ, and walked to Enterprise just around the corner to get our rental car. This sounds kinda like a pain but it was really a quick trip and saved us hundreds in rental car fees. It is so much cheaper to rent a car out of New Jersey than Manhattan!

The drive up to Lake Placid takes about 5 hours, we were on the tail end of fall but still managed to drive through some absolutely beautiful foliage.

Trees around Lake George:

Once we got up to Lake Placid, which is pretty far north (closer to Canada than anything else) and higher up in elevation, all of the changing leaves were gone but it was still beautiful. The name "Adirondack" comes from an Indian word meaning "bark eater", for Indians in the area that used to eat bark when food was scarce in winter.

When we arrived, the first thing we did was take a ride on the hotel's Hacker-Craft boat around the lake.

The view of our hotel from the boat:

We had a boat guide named John - John and his wife retired and moved from California to Lake Placid 6 years ago, where he now has this part-time job of driving hotel guests around in a beautiful boat. John is clearly a man who loves to talk to people and tell stories, which is perfect for a boat guide, and you just know his wife loves that he has this job and doesn't talk to her in the house all day long. :) He was a really nice man!

John the boat guide:

Our fellow boat riders were members of a family there for a wedding, this was the littlest wedding guest:

View of the lake over the front of the boat:

The weather was windy and overcast, but surprisingly warm (58F) for how late it was in the year and how far north we were. But it was windy because a cold front was blowing in and by the time we left for NYC the temperature had dropped to 27F and it snowed!

The lake is beautiful and crystal clear. It is fed by over a dozen springs, and the water is completely turned over every 3 days. This makes for a really cold lake! Even in the summer the water is quite chilly (65-70F).

John drove us by what he thought was the largest house on the lake - I think owned by someone very high up at Goldman Sachs. He bought this property as well as the property next door just for the privacy (and never uses the house next door).

John also drove us by the smallest house on the lake:

He said that one summer he was driving a group of "very nice ladies" around on a tour and he passed by this house... where the owner was out sunbathing on his front dock. Nude. The owner proceeded to stand up and wave, fully nude, to the "nice ladies". So now John does not drive by unless he doesn't see a boat out front!

A boat actually would be a good indication whether or not someone is home - a lot of the properties around the lake have no road access, boat/water access only! The Adirondacks are a national park that is bigger than Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Glacier Park, and the Great Smokey Mountains combined! Living inside means you have very limited options about developing your property or the land around it. You cannot cut down any tree unless it has already naturally fallen (you can trim the limbs), and you cannot expand your dock outside of the original footprint. The state keeps very close tabs on any and all building and if you go outside of your allotment, you are heavily fined. John said that one house built a slightly bigger dock, and the state fined them $10,000, made them tear it down, and wouldn't let them build another one for a year. They are serious!

Us on the lake:

The residents of the area are very protective of the land. If you want to live in a buzzing, well-developed area, Lake Placid is probably not for you. John told us the story of Charlie, a man who still lives on the lake. He owned 2,000 acres of property. One day the state came to him and asked if they could pay him to build a road through part of his property. He told them no, that he didn't want his land disturbed. The state then told Charlie that they were going to take the property through eminent domain and do it anyway. Charlie said over my dead body! He donated 1,500 of his 2,000 acres to the state into wilderness; the law says the state has to accept it, and once land goes into wilderness it doesn't come back out. So Charlie sacrificed ownership to keep the land pristine, and the state had to figure something else out.

Where we stayed had little lakefront cabins complete with Adirondack chairs out front and a wood-burning fireplace. The perfect antidote to the city!

Cocktail hour view from our cabin:

Dinner at the hotel:

The next day we rented bikes and rode them around the lake, off-roading style. Stephen loves mountain bike riding. I love the mountains, I love hiking, and I love bikes, but I am not good at getting those things to combine. It's not my most coordinated effort. But this trip I got the hang of it a little more and we had a great time.

Man-made bench in the woods:

The view from the bench:

Riding around the lake gives you the best views!

That night back at the hotel, there was a man there who was a bird of prey expert and he had an owl and a hawk with him. I got to hold the owl! She looked right into my eyes. Her handler said she loves to be stroked on her beak and the feathers right above it, which I did with my free hand, and her little eyes closed and she looked exactly like my dog when I scratch his chin.

She's so good with people because the first part of her life she spent in a school around children and has grown up with lots of noise and hands around her.

Where she likes to sit:

He wouldn't let anyone near the hawk, he said "if it looks like she's sizing you up, she is. She has been known to go after deer, so she is not afraid of you!"

Our last morning was clear but very cold: