A Glimpse Of The Adirondacks

I can remember feeling overwhelmed with trip planning when I first looked at a map of New York in satellite view. There was a large wrinkled dome that filled nearly a quarter of the state. It contained a lot of small lakes and no major roads or towns. The Adirondack Mountains. Even though mountains are our favorite, cell service and route planning can be tricky, so I decided to skip over them, thinking we could just visit another year when we are more experienced.

But then, our friends told us they booked a week of camping at a small campground in Indian Lake. Off to google I went and saw that Indian Lake, NY was right smack in the center of the Adirondacks. I called the campground, Thornbush Acres RV Park, and was promised there was a brand new cell tower and they had a signal. So we decided to tag along!

Turns out the reason the Adirondacks look so daunting on a map is that they are. The six million acre Adirondack Park is the largest piece of protected land in the contiguous US. It is larger than Yellowstone, Great Smoky Mtns, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Glacier National Parks, combined. There are 3000 lakes and ponds and 2000 miles of hiking trails. New York owns about half of the land, which they call Forest Preserves, and the rest is privately owned and dotted with small towns but land use is regulated. Spending just a week there hardly scratches the surface. We should be spending a month or two staying in different areas.

Unfortunately, it rained. A lot. But not enough to prevent me from falling in love with the Adirondacks.

We were able to take our kayaks out one afternoon on the closest lake to us, Lake Abanakee. We got to see and hear our first loon. The water is pristine, just appears brown because of tannins from the trees.

Another afternoon we hiked the Castle Rock trail which has very low risk and high reward (only 3 miles roundtrip) for this view of Blue Mountain Lake. I had hiked this trail earlier in the week with Mike and Betty and really wanted Michael to see it. It was the quintessential Adirondack view I had imagined.

Since it was supposed to rain all day Saturday, Michael took Thursday off, the only entirely good weather day we had. In the morning we hiked up Wakely Mountain, which claims to have the highest fire tower in the area. We climbed straight up, through a boreal forest of mostly spruce and balsam fir to a view of where we were going to paddle that afternoon.

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Next, we headed to the Cedar River Flow, a wide lake-like area of the Cedar River. The surrounding area is completely state-owned and there were no houses or development. It was the perfect place to paddle. We saw another loon, two merganser families, and evidence of beavers.

On Saturday, sure enough, it rained. So we went to a museum called the Adirondack Experience, where we easily spent 4+ hours. We learned about the history of the logging and forestry industry, the early settlements that depended on guide boats, and finally the heyday of wilderness recreation of the “Great Camps” and hunting cottages.

On Sunday, we drove back to the western part of the state to see Niagra Falls!