You, too, can spice up your leisure time with small adjustments to your methods and mindset. Below are some high points of my Adirondackpalooza to help spark fresh explorations.
How to Keep that New-Crush Passion for the Adirondack Park
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More Articles From Niki Kourofsky
A Lavender Paradise Nestled in the Champlain Valley
“I love the look of the lavender against the mountains,” says Lindsey Pashow, owner of Adirondack View Lavender. Pashow grew up on this 13-acre Keeseville property, but she and her parents, both retired teachers, didn’t start planting their fragrant crop on a portion of the farm until 2018.
Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day at P2’s Irish Pub
P-2’s Irish Pub, in Tupper Lake, has all of that and more at its annual St. Paddy’s Day blowout. What it doesn’t have is any claim to an Irish pedigree.
Service Stations: American Legions in the Adirondacks
My earliest memories of the local American Legion—Post 1619 in West Plattsburgh, less than a mile from our house—were of watching slow-pitch softball under bug-swarmed lights on muggy summer nights.
Wild Turkey: Dannemora’s Thanksgiving Tradition
Planning a table-groaning Thanksgiving meal for an army—while working around any number of schedules and eating habits—sometimes feels like a losing game of 3D chess.
Spooky Spots around the Adirondacks
As a Gen-Xer—a demographic that often has trouble leaving our teenage angst and cynicism back with the oversized flannels and ripped jeans of the late 20th century—I generally maintain a rolling-my-eyes attitude toward ghost stories. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get spooked from time to time.
The Roots of Rustic Style
Everyone can—and generally does—have their own idea of Adirondack style, making it a knotty concept to nail down. The form has branched into ever-evolving offshoots, but there’s a common origin, a beau ideal that was conceived in the heady days of robber-baron excess. If you close your eyes, you can probably conjure it—satiny wood, coarse bark, tangled sticks, river-smoothed stones. And some very dead animals.
Good Time Charley: The Life of Theme Park Patriarch Charles R. Wood
Once upon a time, there was a larger-than-life man named Charles R. Wood—better known to all as Charley—who dedicated his life to fun. He strode onto the North Country’s mid-century scene with little more than a smile and a hammer, but managed to build an entertainment empire from scratch.
What I Didn’t See on the Way to Pine Lake
When I told my 16-year-old daughter I was going on a seven-or-so-mile round-trip hike alone last September, she acted like I was marching to my doom.
On Track with Inlet’s Latest Eatery, The Caboose
Who says you need train tracks to have a train? Though Inlet’s nearest railroad—the Raquette Lake Railway, which ran a couple of miles to the north—shut down in the 1930s, the community still boasts its own caboose. The red Grand Trunk Western car has been a Route 28 institution since 1994, when it rode the rails from Utica to Thendara, then hitched a truck ride to its new home. It was stationed on a short section of faux tracks, where it chugged along as a takeout joint called the Loose Caboose, and then, briefly, as the Moose Caboose, before closing in 2006.
The Derry Queen
Google “floating picnic table” and it’s easy to fall into a rabbit hole, chasing one link after another to curiouser and curiouser contraptions. I stumbled onto one of those contraptions a couple of years ago as I noodled around on Pinterest.
Old Craft, New Twist
John Henry Rushton was a trendsetter. The Canton-based boatbuilder, who made top-of-the-line watercraft in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was egged on by his famous customer George Washington Sears, aka “Nessmuk,” to design smaller and smaller boats for the diminutive adventurer.
On Sale Now
October 2026
Lost hikers, splintered bones and wildfires—a forest ranger reflects on more than two decades of coming to the rescue. Plus the oldest tavern in the Adirondacks, a trip through James Bond’s Lake George, and new energy in Schroon Lake.
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