Adirondack Cryptids: Champy vs. Bigfoot

Adirondack Cryptids: Champy vs. Bigfoot

Illustration by Jesús Sotés   Lake Champlain Monster Description: A Captain Crum, who navigated the lake in 1819, told a tale of an almost 200-foot-long black monster with three teeth and a star on its forehead. Sandra Mansi, the photographer behind a hotly...
The Ghost of Recluse Island

The Ghost of Recluse Island

Illustration by Jesús Sotés   When Steve Reynolds’s grandmother went to her reward in 1942, her last words were, “Oh dear, can’t I have another summer on the island?” For years she arrived on Lake George’s Recluse Island in May and stayed until October. And since...
Pedals to the Metal

Pedals to the Metal

Railbiking through the forest and along the Hudson River Photograph courtesy of Revolution Rail Co. I’m a lifelong Lake George enthusiast. Specifically, a lifelong Lake George Narrows camping enthusiast. My first trip to the islands was when I was two months old, for...
Tongue Twisters

Tongue Twisters

Snow-covered terrain is a layer cake of frost and creatures. Last winter, particularly cold and snowy, the white frosting rose almost three feet atop the Tongue Mountain Range along Lake George. The mice and voles lived beneath the flakes, at ground level. Another...
Last Monday in July

Last Monday in July

A boater who had been partying all day collided with a family taking an evening cruise on Lake George. The family—and Lake George—will never be the same Video footage from a boathouse security camera shows Lake George calm and quiet on the evening of July 25, 2016....

Ride of the Century

A “century” is, for cyclists, the ultimate challenge—a 100-mile day, the two-wheeled equivalent of running a marathon. And what better way to ride a century than around the Adirondack Park’s greatest lake? My cycling partner Steve and I arrive at Lake George village...
The Smartest Lake on Earth

The Smartest Lake on Earth

Everyone’s got a smartphone—no status points there. But at least for the moment there’s only one truly smart body of water anywhere on Earth. If you live in Bolton Landing or Hague, if you canoe to Diamond Island or climb the Tongue Mountain Range, if you Jet Ski the...
Jazzing Up Lake George

Jazzing Up Lake George

  Four years ago during Jazz at the Lake—Lake George Arts Project’s annual music festival on the western shore of Lake George—the virtuosic young sax player Grace Kelly was blowing soulfully through Gershwin’s “Summertime” when a passing steamboat sounded its horn....

Adiwheredacks?

Fuzzy geography on the streets of Manhattan She was wearing four-inch heels, a black skirt and red top, rings the size of disco balls, and long blond hair, and showing me how to collapse one of those tiny fold-up bikes for people with tiny city apartments. A minute or...