How to Visit the Adirondacks

My family likes taking holiday. Normally our holidays are insanely...well...insane. However, we're in the States on home leave which limits walking off cliffs in the Himalayans and scuba diving in the Indian Ocean. Instead, after visiting Baltimore, Washington DC, NYC for a morning and driving everywhere in between, we spent the week in the Adirondacks. I'm a New Yorker (because that's the State I've lived in the longest) but I'd never been to the Adirondacks. It's a state park, it's a region of Upstate New York, and it's also a holiday destination in the Northeast.

In the winter, the Adirondacks are for snowmobiling and snow sports. In the summer, vacationers lay in swimsuits around one of the thousands of lakes in the region, soaking up the sun and a good brai. The region survives because of tourism which has been thriving for centuries and lives on despite the recent economic downturn. It's beautiful, so beautiful, and so people drive up for weekends or recent cabins for weeks at a time, and have family reunions in a place preserved for it's natural beauty.

We rented a cabin for a week up at Old Forge which is famous for the "Enchanted Forest" water theme part, fudge shops, woodsy/nature themed decor shops, and the closest IGA grocery shop in the area. It's really adorable. We stayed on Big Moose Lake, went tubing on the lake, went on a seven mile kayak run down Big Moose River, went hiking around nearby Big Moss Lake, and had lots of brais and roasted marshmallows. It was so non-urban...no cappuccinos or Longchamps bags. But I really found myself loving the fresh pine needles and my new red Keens.

That's what overseas dwellers and global nomads do, we try new things and try whatever adventures are nearby to be experienced. It makes us happy. Sometimes you love it and sometimes you don't but you always leave thinking it was interesting...or at least different.