Fifty-five years ago Tad and Linda Sturgis’s Adirondack Store was featured in the winter issue of Adirondack Life. By then, the couple’s emporium had been thriving for more than a decade.
Travel
The Adirondack Harvest Festival
On a September afternoon at Westport’s Essex County Fairgrounds, a farmers’ market on steroids is underway. People stroll booth to booth and table to table along a loop of growers and bakers and makers.
The Jay Invitational of Clay
July in Jay—a hamlet that cradles the East Branch of the Ausable River—is postcard perfect. Families splash in the rapids below the covered bridge. On weekends, musicians perform by the gazebo on the village green. Every Fourth of July there’s a lively parade, followed by field games, then fireworks. And the past few years another summer event has added an artistic flair to this Rockwellian scene: the Jay Invitational of Clay.
The Mill
As an entryway piece it’s stunning: a massive, rotating millstone dangling from the ceiling, made of foam but looking as if its weight could stop Wile E. Coyote in his tracks. The sculpture, A Stone Alone, greets visitors to The Mill, a former grain mill that’s been transformed into an arts center with galleries, a performance space and a speakeasy that slings craft cocktails and small plates.
Light Up the Lodge
“The place is magical during the holidays,” says the Whiteface Lodge’s executive chef Greg Sherman. Festive garlands and twinkling lights dangle from peeled-log beams; miniature mountain villages depict wintry scenes; and shiny wrapped packages ring Christmas trees and are stacked on fireplace mantels.
The Birch Store
Ask an Adirondacker about their take on our region’s signature style and you’ll hear all sorts of things: Tree stumps and twigs. Plaids and earth tones. Rough-hewn accents and stuffed animal heads. But Marion Jeffers’s approach is a little different.
Five Ways to Make the Most of Your Adirondack Autumn
Celebrate the harvest or lift a stein to the season at colorful gatherings throughout the park—find a bushel of fall fun at our events calendar.
Lake George Music Festival
Scholars say composer Samuel Barber wrote Adagio for Strings in Austria. But watch a sunrise from Lake George’s shoreline—waves lapping, light breaking through the dawn mist—and you can imagine how Barber’s heart-stirring masterpiece that crescendos and crashes might have been inspired by this place.
Drinking in the View: Highlands Vineyard
Lindsey Campagna grew up with this sprawling Champlain Valley view—her extended family has been living on Highland Road, in Keeseville, for decades.
The Gem
After sitting vacant for a decade, Bolton Landing’s former Sagamore Pub had lost whatever luster it once possessed. But on their visits to Lake George, Paty and Richard Boccato—who have launched successful businesses on both coasts—saw it as a diamond in the rough.
On Sale Now
February 2026
Meet Lake Placid’s Tate Frantz, a top ski-jumping contender at the Milan-Cortina Olympics—plus Fourth Lake ice hockey, North Creek Ski Bowl lore, brews at Lake Clear's historic Charlie’s Inn and more!
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