Walking Around Town And A Quick Steam

Today was a day of exploring the town of Lake George, NY.  For those of you who don’t know where Lake George is, it’s located in the southern part of the Adirondack Mountains.  The Adirondack Mountains are located in Adirondack Park, the largest national park in the country.

Yup…you heard me right.  The largest national park in the country.  Not Yellowstone, not Grand Canyon, not Yosemite but Adirondack Park.  It covers over 6.1 million acres!

Interesting fact: Adirondack Park is actually larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon AND the Great Smoky Mountains National Parks COMBINED! And it’s only 4 hours from our home in Rochester, NY.  This is actually our first trip here believe it or not.  We certainly need to make a few more trips here to explore more areas.

We are here with our friends Joe and Lynn and their 3 kids.  We walked around town a little bit to see what we see.  The kids wanted to go Geocaching and David and I wanted to wander and find lunch somewhere.  So we split up for a couple hours with plans to meet up for a 3pm steam paddle boat ride down the lake.

This is a cute town.  Not to touristy.  Yes, there are the proverbial t-shirt shops and souvenir shops.  There’s even a wax museum, but it is not over done.  There’s more independently owned shops than commercial shops I’d say.  Lake George still has that small town, quaint village kinda feel.  At least I thought so.  We compared it to Bar Harbor, Maine and the Thousand Islands area, if you’re familiar with those.  The lake is certainly the attraction here with boat rides, para-sailing, kayak rentals and beaches.

However, don’t get me wrong.  The prices in the restaurants certainly reflect a tourist area.  That was the one down side I suppose.  David and I found lunch in what we thought was a cute little Mexican restaurant.  One taco, yes only one, and one burrito, no drinks was $21 bucks.  And it was way below average.  We could have had a better taco at Taco Bell, that’s how bad it was.  I’m sure their are good restaurants out there.  But without being familiar with the area, you never know what your going to get.  Oh well.  We won’t hold that against Lake George or the area.

When you’re in a touristy area, you have to expect touristy prices.

Once it was time to meet up with Joe, Lynn and the kids for the boat ride, of course, it started to rain a little.  We didn’t let that stop us though.

We chose the Minnie Ha Ha Steam Paddle Boat because it was only an hour long and we thought that would be enough.

And it was.

Lake George is a beautiful lake.  If you ever get up to this area, which you must must must, this whole Adirondack region is a nice place.  We haven’t been anywhere else around here but Lake George, but we like it so far.

This is where the rich people come to play.  The shoreline is littered with large houses, boat houses and huge lawns for laying out.

Sad thing is I’m sure these places only get used a couple times a year, if that.

There’s quite the activity on the lake from water skiing to tubing to just laying out on your boat.

Aaaahhhh the life.

It was a good day had by all.  The rain was barely an issue.  It cleared up almost as soon as it started.

The sun came back out and it was time to go back to the campground, figure out what’s for dinner and build a campfire.

S’mores anyone?