ADIRONDACKS: From canoe camping to wilderness luxury

BY CLARA HEMPHILL | Special to Newsday

2:43 PM EDT, May 25, 2007

A view of one of the lakes in the Adirondacks (Wikipedia Commons)

Paddling a canoe at dawn, my husband and I watched the mist rise on the lake. The silhouettes of the hemlock trees on the shore slowly turned from black to dark green and the sky turned from dark gray to light blue. The only sound was the dip of our paddles in the water and the mournful cry of the loon. The stress of our daily lives at home seemed a million miles away.

The rugged wilderness of the Adirondack Mountains in the vast state park in upstate New York has long attracted visitors seeking to get away from the pressures of modern life. While the southern border of the park is only a four-hour drive from New York City, the park extends almost to Canada, and the region feels as remote as the great national parks of the Western United States. Whether you are paddling a canoe, hiking a craggy mountain trail or leaping from rocks for a dip in a lake, it is easy to feel like a 19th-century explorer discovering the Adirondacks for the first time.

You can visit the Adirondacks for a bargain vacation, sleeping in a tent and cooking over a fire. Or you can splurge on a full-service resort, where someone makes your bed in the morning and cooks your meals. Or, for something in between, you can rent a cabin and enjoy the comfort of hot water and clean sheets while economizing by cooking yourself. We've tried all three.

Canoe camping

Campsites in the Adirondacks range from rugged tent sites -- with only a picnic table and an outhouse as amenities -- to RV sites with hookups for water, electricity and even cable TV. Our preference is for the most primitive sites. Sites that are accessible only by water are especially remote and beautiful. Some campgrounds rent canoes. One advantage to canoe camping over car camping or back-packing: You can bring a lot of heavy food and gear and still get far off the beaten track. Our dawn paddle was part of our canoe-camping trip to Forked Lake, a state-owned campground about a five-hour drive north of Manhattan. Our group of nine packed into two cars: My husband, Rob Snyder; our two children, Max, 12, and Allison, 9; my 81-year-old mother-in-law, Mildred Snyder; and another couple with their two children. We left the state highway in the tiny village of Long Lake (population 852) to drive 10 miles along a narrow road that eventually became dirt.

Arriving at the ranger's station at the state campsite, we chose two sites ($15 a night per site, plus the cost of our reservations made earlier online) and rented four canoes ($15 a day per canoe.) We loaded up our canoes with all our gear, paddled 11/2 miles out on the lake to our two campsites on a small bay at the edge of the lake. We tied our boats to wood docks and scrambled up the rocks to the heavily wooded sites. Each campsite had a picnic table, an outhouse and a fireplace. We pitched our tents and inflated our air mattresses. Our friend, the gourmet cook in our crew, made delicately seasoned beef tenderloin and grilled zucchini and eggplant over the fire that first night, accompanied by a light red French burgundy. Even though it was high season -- the middle of August -- we felt we had the campgrounds to ourselves. There were other campers around the lake, but we couldn't see or hear them. We knew they were there only because we spotted their campfires dotting the lakeshore.

There's not much to do on Forked Lake and that, of course, is its charm. We read. We sang songs. We played cards. We swam. We talked. We gathered wood for the fire. One day, we rigged a poncho between two long sticks and "sailed" our canoe up the lake. The children built tiny houses from moss, twigs and acorns and made vast villages for imaginary friends. We roasted marshmallows over the fire. Once we discovered wild raspberries.

Where to stay: If you are looking for a campsite with amenities such as hot showers and utilities hookups, try the Web site of the private Adirondack Campground Association, adirondackcampgrounds.com. If something more primitive is your style, you may prefer the campgrounds run by New York State, www.dec.ny gov.Indian Lake Islands, a state campground in the town of Indian Lake, has campsites on islands. Lewey Lake, a state campground nearby, has hot showers. Forked Lake has some sites that are accessible only by water and some that are accessible on foot. Booking in advance is recommended, particularly for August. State campgrounds cost about $15 a night, plus the cost of reserving online. Canoe rentals are about $15 a day. Private campgrounds, which tend to have more amenities, range in price from $15 to $64 a night.

Lodges: Wilderness luxury
Tourism in the Adirondacks began in the 19th century, when millionaire financiers such as J.P. Morgan, the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts built "great camps," luxury getaways with a rustic feel. Some of these camps have been converted to lodges, where visitors may enjoy the comforts of a good hotel and dining room with wilderness hiking trails and boating nearby. Some are open year-round; others are open only in the summer. They range in price from super-expensive to moderate.

One of our favorites is The Hedges, a family-owned resort in the village of Blue Mountain Lake. The resort was originally built as one of the great camps. It still has two of the original camp buildings -- a stone lodge with guest rooms and a guest house with a wrap-around porch, a wood shingled-roof and wood-paneled rooms where you can read or play cards. It also has newer buildings, including a dining room and 14 cabins, each with one to four bedrooms. The food is good and the service attentive.

We have gone to The Hedges every year since our children were 7 and 5. For us, the luxury of the place lies in what it doesn't have as much as what it does have: No telephones, no television, no meals to cook, no dishes to wash, no beds to make, no schedule to keep. The cabins are comfortable but simple, and while there are some amenities -- a tennis court, a dock with canoes and kayaks, a sandy beach, a game room -- we find we spend most of our time reading in Adirondack chairs by the edge of the lake. For our children, the luxury of the place is the freedom to run around and make up their own games without grown-ups interfering. Our only rule is no boating or swimming without a grown-up. From breakfast until dinnertime, they amuse themselves with other guests, inventing a game of kick-the-can on the lawn, playing board games or ping pong, or organizing a ring-toss competition.

For family outings nearby, there is first-rate hiking and the Adirondack Museum, with its displays of life in the past and the present. Our favorite excursion: Paddling to Rock Island in Blue Mountain Lake, climbing a rock cliff and jumping into the water 20-feet below.

Where to stay: There are a lot of lodges to choose from in the Adirondacks. The Web site adirondacks.com will help you get started. Great choices for families include The Hedges on Blue Mountain Lake (thehedges.com, 518-352-7325), Hemlock Hall, also on Blue Mountain Lake (hemlockhall.com, 518-352-7706), and Garnet Hill Lodge in North Riverper Lodge/rjg (garnet-hill.com, 518-251-2444). Romantic getaways for couples include Elk Lake Lodge in North Hudson (elklakelodge.com, 518-532- 7616) and Sagamore at Raquette Lake (sagamore.org, 315-354-5311). At some of the most popular lodges, you may have to book six months in advance for high season, July and August.

Rates range from super-expensive to the more reasonable. At The Point on Saranac Lake (thepointresort.com, 800-255-3530), one of the most expensive lodges in the region, a double room with meals, costs $850 to $1,350 a night. Rates at The Hedges, which include breakfast and dinner, range per couple from $215 to $295 a night. Children younger than 6 stay free; rates for each child 6 and older and each extra adult are $60 a night. Rates at the Northbrook Lodge in Paul Smiths (northbrooklodge.com, 518-327- 3379), on the other hand, start at $572 a person a week for a double room and meals in July and rise to $598 in August and September. Be sure to ask about special packages that might save you money, particularly off-season in spring and fall, when booking.

Hint: If you can't afford to spend the night at a great camp, you can still catch a glimpse of what a stay there would be like. Consider having lunch at one; many allow non-guests to eat in their dining rooms. Or just go for a tour. The Sagamore, built by railroad tycoon W.W. Durant in 1895, is a National Historic Landmark that can be toured for $12 a person. White Pine Camp in Paul Smiths (whitepinecamp.com, 518-327-3030), which served as Calvin Coolidge's summer White House in 1926, can be toured on Saturdays in July and August; call Adirondack Architectural Heritage (aarch.org) at 518-834-9328 for information.

Rental cabins
For comforts such as hot water and clean sheets without the expense of a lodge, consider renting a "cabin" with a kitchen for cooking your own meals. Even large houses in the Adirondacks are called "cabins." You can rent one for a weekend, a week, or longer. Some are rented by the owner -- who may live there part of the year -- or an agency. Others may be part of a resort.

One winter, my husband and two children joined my sister's family for a three-day ski weekend. On the Web site cyberentals.com, we found a Swiss-style chalet, an A-frame with six bedrooms and a dining area that seated 10. The house, in a secluded, heavily wooded area, was fully furnished, with bedding, towels and a well-equipped kitchen. It was in the town of Johnsburg, about a 41/2-hour drive from New York City. It was a 15-minute drive to the slopes at Gore Mountain and half an hour from Garnett Hill Lodge, which has 55 kilometers of cross-country ski trails -- some of the best cross-country skiing in North America.

By day, we skied. My sister and her husband found easy, nearly flat, trails in open meadows while my husband lived out his Jack London fantasies in the Siamese Pond Wilderness, a rugged back-country trail. The rest of us skied down a gentle slope through the woods to a place called Rogers Road, where a shuttle bus picked us up and took us back to the top. By night, we cooked, played cribbage and sat around the pot-bellied stove, chatting and remarking on our good fortune to have found such a pleasant place to spend a short vacation.

Where to stay: Owners post listings for vacation homes on cyberentals.com. Another good Web site is (Adirondack by Owner) adkbyowner.com. Some resorts, such as Garnet Hill Lodge, have cabins on the property that can be rented without a meal plan. Wood's Lodge (woodslodge.com, 518-532-7529), two blocks from the village of Schroon Lake, has cabins, suites and a communal kitchen in a Victorian house. It also has a swimming beach, canoes and a ping-pong table. White Pine Camp, which is open year-round, has cabins that sleep two to eight people.

The cabin we rented cost $575 for a three-night winter weekend -- not bad for a house that sleeps up to 10. Wood's Lodge costs $140 a night with a three-night minimum for a family of four. White Pine Camp cabins, including the one where Coolidge slept, rent for $850 to $2,250 a week at the height of summer, depending on the number of guests and the cabin.