Tupper Lake and Blue Mountain Lake, in the heart of New York’s fabled Adirondack Park, boast stunning museums designed to involve everyone in learning about the unique history, science, natural resources, and culture of the Adirondack region.
Best of all, the museums — The Wild Center in Tupper Lake and the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake — are great fun for families. They offer a perfect introduction to this very special part of the state filled with lakes, rivers, mountains, hiking trails, and forests interspersed with small communities.
The Adirondacks are really a place like no other in the world and they are an easy five or six hour drive from Buffalo. New York State established the six-million-acre park in 1892. The Adirondack Park is larger than Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Great Smokies National Parks combined. It is also the largest park in the lower 48 states.
The tourism boom came to the area after the Civil War. Inspired by the Rev. William Henry Harrison Murray’s best-selling 1869 edition of Adventures in the Wilderness or Camp Life in the Adirondacks, tourists stampeded northward. The region was forever changed. An entire industry grew up, spawning inns with guides who took the “city sports” hunting and fishing.
The building of more and more lavish hotels followed, along with better transportation. The Adirondack region became one of the major playgrounds for the rich and famous of the gilded age in American history, between the end of the Civil War and the onset of World War I.
Many of the larger hotels are long gone and the area is now more heavily forested than it was a century ago. The 10,000 square miles are wilder in many ways than they were in the 19th century. There is probably nowhere else on Earth where the same claim can be made for a space of this grand scale.
The history and culture is told at the nationally acclaimed Adirondack Museum that aims to chronicle the Adirondack experience. The museum will celebrate its 60th anniversary next year. With Blue Mountain rising behind it and Blue Mountain Lake sparkling below, the 121-acre campus features displays in 24 buildings.
Boating has always been an essential mode of transportation and an inviting recreational activity within the park. The museum houses the largest inland collection of watercraft in the country. Many are on display in the “Boats and Boating in the Adirondacks” exhibit.
Luckily, we arrived on a day when Allison Warner, the only woman and one of a handful of professional boat builders who still make authentic Adirondack guideboats, was working on her creation. (She is on duty Tuesday-Saturdays from 10 am to 3 pm).
The wooden guideboat is unique to the Adirondacks. It was designed for hunting, camping and fishing in the woods and is lightweight enough to carry on land between lakes and rivers. Made entirely by hand, the boats take about 500 hours to complete. Her boat will be auctioned at the museum next summer. Other guideboats have raised as much as $25,000 for the museum.
Warner, a native of Texas, attended college in Virginia and came to the area as an AmeriCorps worker and quickly fell in love with the Adirondacks and the signature guideboats.
“Once here I discovered the guideboats,” she explained. “I found them fascinating and I was able to apprentice with a long-time guideboat builder who makes and restores boats. Now I am making my ninth boat and really enjoy that I am helping to carry on this tradition.”
Next season museum visitors will be able to row Adirondack guideboats on a nearby pond.
An 8 feet by 12 feet cabin, with a stovepipe protruding from its bark and tarpaper roof, was the last cabin of Noah John Rondeau. He lived alone in the woods near Long Lake in the wild and beautiful Cold River country. His cabin is a popular exhibit and visitors can listen to the voice of Rondeau himself. On a recording of a 1959 radio interview Rondeau speaks of “them wonderful mountains.” But the mountains are “rough and hard places to stay” and adds, “they’re beautiful, you know.”
Activities with special appeal to children include feeding the rainbow and brook trout at the Marion River Carry Pavilion; ringing the bell in the nearby railroad engine; playing games and making projects from years gone by in the Reising Schoolhouse; and visiting the Kids Cabin, a child-scaled homestead for playing and imagining.
This year, for the first time, the museum’s historic trail to secluded Minnow Pond is open to the public. Self-guided hikes are available daily and guided naturalist walks are conducted on Thursdays in July, August, and September.
In the Great Outdoors exhibit step into an interactive woodland site, discover ice fishing, scale a climbing wall and experience virtual reality, flying over the High Peaks, white water rafting the Hudson and bobsledding down the Olympic track.
Be sure to stop for lunch or a snack in the museum’s Lake View Café. Sit outside and enjoy the extraordinary panorama of the lake, mountains, and islands.
A 45-minute drive from Blue Mountain Lake is The Wild Center in Tupper Lake. It is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and is designed to explain and explore the natural world of the Adirondacks. Nature is actually increasing in these woods — moose are back, river otters are spreading throughout the region, peregrine falcons nest on the cliffs, and native trout are spawning in the waters.
Children were everywhere during our visit, excitedly exploring the multiple exhibits and more than 900 live animals including fish, porcupines, owls, ravens, and four otters. The center mixes the living world inside its main building with the live exhibits, outdoor experiences, multi-media shows, and hands-on experiences.
Be sure your children grab a clue sheet at the admission desk that will take them around the museum for a chance to win a prize in the Golden Otter Quest.
The extraordinary Wild Walk made up of 1000 feet of bridges opened last summer. Immediately visits to the center increased dramatically. The entire main structure is accessible to people of all generations and abilities including visitors with strollers, wheelchairs and power chairs. There are also side paths, suspension bridges, an amazing eagle nest, and a gigantic spider web.
My favorite was the eagle nest. Visitors are invited to climb the stairs into the nest that offers tree top views of the surrounding forest and mountains. In the distance is Whiteface Mountain just outside Lake Placid. A nearby sign tells us about an incredible eagle nest found in Ohio that was actually ten feet across and weighed three tons.
Children and even some adults were clearly excited about the chance to walk across an enormous Spider’s Web woven 24 feet above the ground.
The tallest trees in the Adirondacks are white pines — up to 160 feet high. With this height they are prone to lightning strikes and snapping off in gales. When that happens, they become towering trunks that are called snags and soon team with life. The center’s own snag is a giant and has its own stairwell inside. Visitors can learn about all life that makes its home in a snag — safe from outside predators.
Back inside there is much more to see and experience. Movies about the Adirondacks are shown regularly throughout the day in the wide-screen theater.
A crowd pleaser is the chance to be up close with wild life in the Great Hall under the direction of a museum naturalist. We were just in time to meet Helios, a screech owl, who fascinated the audience. Did you know that owl’s eyes are fixed and cannot move but this owl can rotate his head 270 degrees? That helps him spot food.
Other animals and birds featured in the encounters include ravens, porcupines and snakes. In the Hall of the Adirondacks spend time with fish, turtles, and otters.
Everyone is invited to touch a cloud; play piano keys programmed with animal and bird sounds; take an art class, or stop in the artist studio and paint your own owl or other creation.
Stop at the café with outdoor seating beside Greenleaf Pond. Keep your eyes open and you just may see some frogs nearby.
Other outdoor activities include guided canoe and stand-up paddleboard trips, a wild nature play area, picnic grounds, and guided walks along forest trails.
Since the museums are close it is easy to stay on one lake and visit both. But we stayed the first night in Tupper Lake at Shaleen’s Motel, a classic family-run motel which prides itself on its spotless rooms with fridges and microwaves, as well as outdoor pool, basketball courts, play area, and complimentary bikes. It is just a couple minutes from The Wild Center, restaurants, and the downtown business district.
Then it was two nights at the Hedges on Blue Mountain Lake, my favorite Adirondack lake. I first stayed here many years ago and returned over the years with multi-generational family members. Time seems to have stood still. Always well maintained, it looks just as it always did with its historic buildings and cottages in the woods.
The property was orginally owned by Col. Hiram Duryea and construction of the main lodge began in 1880 and was completed in two years. The property is now listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. It was given the name of The Hedges in May, 1921 when it welcomed its first hotel guests.
There are a wide variety of accommodations from a room in one of the lodges to a four-bedroom cottage for the whole family. There are also cottages with porches. There is a small sand beach, tennis court, game room, and complimentary canoes and kayaks. All rates include delicious breakfast and dinner daily, evening snacks including homemade cookies, and nightly campfires with S’mores. Rooms have refrigerators but no TV. There is WiFi, however.
There was time for a couple kayak trips including one into Eagle Lake. If we had been more energetic we could have continued on to Utowana Lake. There are also guided motor boat trips down the three lakes for a less physically taxing cruise.
Blue Mountain rises to a height of 3,759 feet. One of the more popular and accessible is the route to the summit of Blue Mountain. The average hiking time for the four-mile round-trip is about four hours. It would make a good half-day trip, even allowing time for a picnic on the summit. The trail is known for its steep pitches, which begin almost immediately.
From the fire tower on the top, the views of lakes, ponds and mountains are spectacular and hard to match in the park. Blue Mountain’s isolation from surrounding hills makes for especially good viewing.
Travel Tip of the Month: For the Adirondack Museum visit www.adirondackmuseum.org or call 518-352-7311. For the Wild Center visit www.wildcenter.org or call 518-359-7800. Both museums have a second day free policy, so when you buy a ticket you can come back the next day for free. Keep your ticket stubs because there are discounts on the second museum.
For Shaleen’s Motel, call 518-359-3384 or visit www.shaleensmotel.com. For The Hedges, call 518-352-7325 or visit www.thehedges.com.
Deborah Williams is a veteran travel writer who lives in Holland, NY and whose work has appeared in national and international publications. She is the winner of a SATW Lowell Thomas Gold Travel Writing Award and the author of “The Erie Canal: Exploring New York’s Great Canals.” Learn more at www.deborahwilliams.com.