Adirondacks offers a brief window on autumn that can match the best
The Adirondacks, land of long lakes and last Mohicans, do their big business in the summer, when upstate New York receives its meagre annual allotment of warm weather.
The forest-fringed waterways and low mountains leap to life as boaters and campers arrive from downstate and beyond. From the Twenties cabins in the northern woods to the kitsch-rich village of Lake George, the place seems to buzz with merriment and just-born bugs.
Then everything freezes.
By mid-October, dozens of lodgings and restaurants close for winter. By January, the subzero nights arrive, the crust on the lakes thicken and the population dwindles down to mostly skiers, snowmobilers and ice fishermen.
Colours of joy
But there is a gap in the conventional wisdom about the Adirondacks and it extends from Labour Day to Columbus Day, maybe a few weeks beyond. During that spell, the leaves turn, the lodging rates fall and the locals are happy to see you, especially on a weekday.
Maybe because the colour comes so early and lasts so briefly, the Adirondack leaf season does not get outsiders' attention the way neighbouring New England's autumns do. But the more locals I spoke with during my family's five days around Lake George, I saw the area as a two-season temptation.
"Not only do we have the reds of the maples and the yellows of the beech and the birch, we have the brilliant yellow of tamarack, which you do not often find in New England," said Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club.
Mirror image
First you see the thriving maple and oak and beech and willow and pine and spruce, then you look down and see it all again, upside down, in the waters of the spring-fed, 32-mile-long Lake George. And then there is the Sagamore hotel, where we spent three nights.
The hotel, built on its own 72-acre island in 1883 and connected to the lake shore by a short causeway, burned twice and was rebuilt twice.
The 350-room version that endures today really began with a 1930 re-design and expansion that was inspired by George Washington's home at Mount Vernon, Virginia, so the heart of the place is the column-lined verandah where two wings of the hotel come together, with lawn all around. It is grand in every sense.
Off the hotel grounds, we took in the views from atop hiker- and driver-friendly Prospect Mountain. We clowned around on the big red Adirondack chair at Ben and Jerry's in high-toned Bolton Landing. And we lunched dockside at the Algonquin Restaurant while a sudden shower drummed on the canopy overhead.
"Sorry for the delay," servers said to us at several restaurants — even though we had not noticed any delay in the service.
We also explored the lake on a speedboat, checking out private estates and overgrown islands, and I took a quick spin in a kayak that mostly left me wishing we had more time.
Passing fun
Perhaps, because we knew we were only passing through, we even enjoyed the feature that most people like least about Lake George in summer — the parade of garish roadside businesses in Lake George Village at the waterway's southern end.
It includes specimens, such as Dr Morbid's Haunted House, Tired John's (a restaurant), the House of Frankenstein Wax Museum, the Magic Castle, the Magic Forest, the Tiki Resort and the Alien Encounter, whose Waikiki Supper Club features 'fire and knife acts'.
We never got around to the fire and knives, nor did we hike the highly recommended Fifth Peak, Buck Mountain and Sleeping Mountain, all nearby. But we did stop at the Up Yonda Farm and the headquarters and bookshop of the non-profit Adirondack Mountain Club, which has been fighting to promote and protect the area since 1922.
In sticking near Lake George, we sampled only the tiniest, south-eastern sliver of the Adirondacks. But at every turn, we bumped against landmarks. Back in the mid-18th century when the French and English were skirmishing over who would take North America, one of the most crucial prizes was Ft Ticonderoga, which the French called 'the key to a continent' but failed to hold.
About 20 years later, on the same soil, upstart American troops led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold won their first major victory against the British by grabbing the same fort.
By the late 19th century, the mightiest families of New York had begun building summer 'Great Camps' here, giving birth to that rustic cabin-and-furniture fashion now known as Adirondack style.
Legislators, meanwhile, had already begun setting aside the six million acres that make up Adirondack Park, which includes about half-and-half public and private property. In all, the park covers more ground than Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon combined.
Visits to the lake have become a summer tradition for tens of thousands of New Yorkers and their East Coast neighbours, and every trip is a chance to wallow again in the sensations of childhood.
"I've been coming for 20 years," said Sue Jurkowski of Belchertown, Massachusetts, who was playing shuffleboard at the Stepping Stones Resort. "Even my kids — they're 21 and 23 — they love it so much that they come back."
For my three-member family, with our 93 years of collective California residency, learning the lake was like finding a new planet.
Visitors might want a tour by water and the options include the Lac du Saint Sacrement, the Minne-haha and the Mohican (three large vessels operated by the Lake George Steamboat Co in Lake George); and the Morgan, operated by the Sagamore in Bolton Landing.
Still, there is plenty to see by land. If you bear north on the two-lane New York Highway 9N, which runs up the westside of Lake George, the roadside kitsch gradually falls away, leaving only forest and peek-a-boo views of the lake, the path gently rising, falling and bending.
If you continue to Ft Ticonderoga at the northern tip of the lake, you pass the tempting tiny town of Hague and the log cabins and docks of semi-rustic resorts, such as the old Trout House, one of the few year-round lodgings on the lake.
Lingering fantasy
In the Ticonderoga exhibition rooms, visitors filed past iron breastplates, arrowheads, etched powder horns and a host of pistols and rifles, where many boys and their fathers lingered and marvelled. And from the high ramparts of the star-shaped fort, it was easy to understand the site's importance: It looks down upon the waters of Lake Champlain in one direction and Lake George in another.
But be warned: On October 21, the fort closes until May.
And anybody considering a late summer or autumn journey to these parts needs to make a study of seasonal discounts and closures — sometimes it is a matter of days between a bargain and a locked door.
Cutting rates
At the Stepping Stones Resort, management cuts cottage prices roughly in half on September 1 (this year the low end for autumn is $120, Dh440, per night), then closes for the season at the end of October. Next door, at the Red Gate Cottages, the owner halves her prices on Labour Day (which puts her most affordable cottages at $75 (Dh275) per night), then closes on October 8, Columbus Day.
The Sagamore stays at least partly open throughout the year, with room rates starting at $229 (Dh841) in summer, drops to $179 (Dh657) in September and October, then bottoming out at $129 (Dh474) in winter, when I would not be surprised to see Jack Nicholson patrolling the halls with an axe.
Go there...Adirondacks
From the UAE
Boston is one of the closest airports to Adirondacks
From Dubai: British Airways flies daily via London. Fare: Dh5,500
Alitalia flies daily via Milan. Fare: Dh5,300
— Information courtesy: Dnata Holidays
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