Lake George and the Adirondacks- Sunday, October 8, 2023

      After breakfast, we headed north.  We stopped at the Adirondack Region welcome center, which had a playground at it.  Abby needed to run around a little bit there.

     Our first destination was the town of Lake George, which lies on the shores of that same lake.  We parked in town and saw several of the big steamboats that take people for cruises out on the lake. Since it's such big tourist town, there was a long row of shops and snack bars to explore.  In the first one we went in, Abby found some small dinosaurs and she obsessed about them for the rest of the morning until we went back for them.  

     We were on the trail of some of the "haunted spots" that Julie had picked out from the "Haunted Historic Trail" booklet.  The first one that she picked out was the "Lake George Mystery Spot," and her curiosity about this spot alone drove the decision making for this whole trip in the first place.  It was not hard to find the spot.  It is marked with an "X" in the ground, near the Lake George Visitor's Center.  If you stand on the spot and face the lake, you're voice echoes back to you with a very weird, other-wordly effect.  No one else nearby hears the echo, only you.  And this effect is sometimes credited to a Native American god or some such spirit.  (In reality, it's pretty clear that there's nothing supernatural about it.  There's a semi-circular stone wall there that stands about two feet high, and the X is right at the center of it.  The echo is just bouncing back from that.  It's kind of a neat effect any way, though.)

     After the so-called "Mystery Spot", Emma got a coffee and Abby had a small bowl of ice cream.  Scott went on ahead to a carving of Robert Rogers of "Roger's Rangers" from the French and Indian War.  He is paddling a canoe with several Native allies, and Scott got some pictures of it. 

     Above the parking lot loomed the wooden walls of Fort William Henry.  The fort was occupied by the British during the French and Indian War.  It was besieged by the French in 1757, and its capture is portrayed in the climax of The Last of the Mohicans [though the movie was filmed elsewhere].  We climbed the hill in spite of Julie's knee and went into the main entrance of the fort.  There was a small display in the entryway about the fort and the siege, but the big giftshop was closed for some reason.  We decided the price of admission was a little steep, considering we had more to do and have already seen quite a few forts in other places.  The fort's ghost tours weren't scheduled until later this evening, and we ended up a long ways away by that time.

     Julie had spotted the entrance to Prospect Mountain on the way into Lake George, and we entered that park to go up the mountain and see what we could see.  We stopped at two different scenic overlooks on the way up and got out to look out on the ever increasing scenery of the surrounding hills, the lake, and the town of Lake George below.  Just below the summit is a large parking lot where you can park and then hike the rest of the way up.  None of us wanted to hike up.  We managed to drive up and circle the summit, but we weren't allowed to park anywhere there, so we returned to the parking lot.  It was significantly colder and windier then it had been in the town, and we didn't stay there long.

     We looked in town for a place for lunch.  We had to navigate through detours and crowds because the town's Oktoberfest had shut down the main street.  We managed to find a woods themed restaurant but after we got inside, Julie realized that they were only serving breakfast food, and she did not want to stay.  We continued on to the next town and found a little diner where we had a late lunch.  We weren't really happy with the food there and the service was slow.

     Another stop from the Haunted History Trails book is the Barkeater Chocolates Factory in North Creek, NY, and we made that our next destination.  It's in a cute little house, and the chocolate is actually manufactured there.  We had to go in to shop in shifts because Abby was asleep in the car.  Julie and Emma heard that the staff believed that there is a child's ghost that haunts the place and he/she will throw chocolate at people that it doesn't like.  Julie and Emma got some truffles here before they left.

     We wondered where to go next, and we decided to continue through the rest of the Adirondack Mountains and come out the other side.  The leaves around Lake George had just begun to turn, though the leaves at the top of Prospect Mountain were noticeably further along. A New York State website for "leaf peepers" said that the leaves in the Adirondack Mountain region were near peak, so we decided to continue through.   We set the phone's map for Watertown, which was about a three-hours drive away.  On the drive we followed the Hudson River for a while, and passed a lot of scenic water including Blue Mountain Lake, Long Lake and Tupper Lake.  Near Long Lake, we found a cute store named Hoss's Country Corner.  It's the kind of store that Julie really likes.  It was filled with Adirondack books and souvenirs, of course, and also had camping supplies and country notions.  There was quite a bit to see, but again we had to do it in shifts because Abby was sleeping in the car.  

     We really wanted to see a bear or a moose, and Julie and Scott were watching particularly closely as we went through a stretch of road that had "Moose crossing" warning signs for more than twenty miles.  We didn't see anything, but we always wonder how close they really are.  Unless a bear or a moose is directly in the road, we'd probably miss them.  If they were any distance into the tree line at all, we would never be able to spot them.  

     The drive through the Adirondacks would have been a nice drive if the weather hadn't been getting progressively worse.   We started out with mostly overcast skies, but the sun was peeking through a little bit.  Fall leaves are never as brilliant as when they are lit by sun, so the "leaf peeping" was a little disappointing that way.  As the drive continued, we found patches of rain that were getting more and more intense.  The sun peeked out a bit once and gave us a glimpse of a rainbow beyond the trees, but that sun didn't last.  When we had mapped out the original route, we were given options on the phone that would avoid the areas that were getting flood warnings.  We took the suggested safer route, but by the time we emerged from the mountains and passed Fort Drum and Watertown, everything was pretty much waterlogged. 

     There was a stop we were going to make at Watertown, but we are saving that for tomorrow.  Instead, we went on to Sacketts Harbor to have dinner at one of Scott's favorite breweries- the Sacketts Harbor Brewery.  They make one of his favorite ales- the 1812 Amber Ale.  He loves the name "1812", of course, but enjoys drinking it too.  He ended up buying case of cans of it to bring home and would have gotten a shirt too, if they had one in his size.

     As we ate dinner, we discussed plans for tomorrow and decided to stay in Watertown.  There's one more stop that we want to make there tomorrow morning if the rain has stopped, and then we should be able to home at a reasonable time on Monday.  Abby got a chance to swim a little bit before bed.  We've actually got a pretty big suite, so if Emma stays up to do work, she will have a place to do it in this time.