Lake Lila

 Summer was gettin’ on and we needed some time in the mountains to recharge. We packed the car with camping gear, hiking gear and boats and headed to Newcomb. It would make a good central location since we didn’t have any specific plans.

We met Tom at his cabin and ate michigans on the porch while planning our next day. It seemed that we all wanted to hike and paddle - so we planned on doing both. Our first stop was at Rich Lake, a beautiful waterway surrounded by wilderness. Paddling west, Annabel renamed all of the protruding rocks as petrified sea creatures. The wind picked up on our return to the beach where we played in the surf before packing our boats.

In the afternoon, we made our way to the Upper Works trailhead where we intended to hike the Indian Pass trail for views of Wallface. When we arrived, we found signage indicating that the trail was impassable due to a broken bridge. Not feeling deterred, we hiked to the broken bridge with a stop for a picnic at the lean-to along the way. Annabel regaled us with songs and stories along the way while we slopped through muddy patches and enjoyed a lovely wander through the woods.

The next day, we pared down our gear into drybags and headed west on the long and bumpy “road” to Lake Lila. We scouted for a campsite and although Annabel had her heart set on camping on an island, we found an excellent mainland site (3) where we set up camp and had our supper. Annabel named one of the shelving rocks “breakfast rock” so we moved our chairs there before bed.

It was an unbelievably quiet night with only occasional loon song. We awoke and ate breakfast from our unperturbed bear cans before paddling to the western shore of the lake to hike Frederica Mountain. This was an easy hike to one of the best wilderness views in the Adirondacks. We were again regaled with songs and stories about Anna and Elsa while we made our way to the top.

We needed a resupply from the car, so we made our way back to the eastern shore to get fresh water and supper on the beach while Annabel splashed in the waves. Cold beef stew somehow tastes delicious in the backwoods.…

Our night was quiet except for a low-flying helicopter at 11PM that scared the bejeezus out of us.…

Low on food and facing a scorching and windy day, we packed up our gear and surfed back to the beach. Annabel had just had her first backcountry camping trip as a five-year-old and did great. We were all filled with the balsam scented recharge that can only be provided by the solitude of a place like Lake Lila.

Tupper Lake

On our most recent venture into the great North Woods, we completed a day-paddling trifecta around the central Adirondacks. We started each day in Newcomb and radiated to our treks from there.

After our arrival in Newcomb, we car-topped Hornbeck Boats and began down the long muffler crunching path that leads to the Essex Chain of Lakes. We carried to the shore of Deer Pond and then carried to Third Lake. We were taken with the landscape surrounding the largest lake of the chain and admired the backcountry setting as we explored the northern arm of the lake. We then followed the chain in numerical order, finally turning around at tiny seventh. The Essex Chain seems lightly used based on some of the weedy channels that we "paddle whacked" through.

On our second day we used our kayaks and met the Atwell Paddlers at Big Moose Lake. We had not paddled on this lake since 2012 but were still enamored with the northeastern arm of the lake where we had our lunch. We also explored east bay and ducked into north bay before heading out, we were on a schedule since we had to make it back to Newcomb for their weekly bands on the beach.

In the evening we met Amy, Ben and Maya at the beach and enjoyed some classic rock sounds before going to Scoops to gorge ourselves on banana splits! Get 'em while they're cold!

Our third installment in our paddling trip turned out to be the biggest surprise of all. We had driven by Tupper Lake for years, but the northern section of the lake from the road never looked like an interesting paddle. Despite this, we decided to give the southern section a try. It was a beautiful area of the lake with interesting islands, bays and mountains surrounding the landscape. It was quite unlike the northern part and rivaled the Saranac Lakes. We paddled into Black Bay for lunch at the lean-to and headed south to see the falls from the Bog River before heading out. We will be back to this spot for sure!

Atwell to Newcomb

On our first August weekend, we kidnapped our nephew and brought him to North Lake for the annual Atwell Fish and Game Club Picnic. We strapped on the feedbag and played some fiddle music to entertain the crowd. Ben enjoyed the sack race and tug-of-war. When he wasn't picnicking, he enjoyed swimming, motorboat rides and fishing. We had a great time catching up with family.

We took Ben to Newcomb for one night where we met his Mom and traded him for our niece. After a nice wade in the Opalescent River, we spent the next few days paddling on Blue Mountain Lake and entertaining the denizens of Newcomb with music. A good time had by all!

Raquette Lake

After arriving home from our western road trip, we were itching to get in our boats. We strapped our kayaks to the top of the car and headed to Tom's cabin in Newcomb for some kayaking day trips. Fortunately each trip would put us through Long Lake's ice cream corner.

On day one, we headed north to Tupper Lake but were sadly met with strong winds and rain. It was not the experience that we were looking for on such a big lake. We turned the car around and headed to Horseshoe Lake, just south of Tupper for an afternoon paddle. With clouds overhead and some rain, we paddled the mostly wild shoreline, admiring the campsites along the way. This lake seems to be an overlooked portion of the Whitney wilderness.

We got ice cream cones at Hoss's to finish our first day.

Our second day of paddling was at Raquette Lake. Launching at Golden Beach, we followed the northern shore, skirting Big Island and following the shoreline of Osprey Island. We then met the caretaker at Tioga Point where we stopped for lunch as we pursued historic photographs of the building coplex that was once housed there. We continued north to Needle Island and turned around when the wind really started to blow. On our return trip, we skirted the longer side of Big Island and found the lean-to's available for camping.

We got ice cream cones at Hoss's to finish our second day.

Our third day turned into a bit of a bust. Arriving at Long Lake, we saw thunderheads in the sky and decided to have some ice cream at Hoss's to wait it out. It kept looking ominous so we headed back to Newcomb to paddle a tiny portion of Harris Lake. Unfortunately the conditions were not in our favor so we packed out to the orchard for the evening.

Mossy Point

Lisa, Tom and I put in kayaks at the Mossy Point boat launch amid camp owners taking their boats out for the season on the last day of September. Clouds were hanging in the air, but we paddled north to stay warm and had a picnic at the extreme northern section of the lake. We were careful not to hurl ourselves over the LaChute falls - which is redundant in French...

We followed the eastern shore south through calm waters and extremely low boat traffic to find spectacular views of Roger's Rock and Anthony's Nose. I explored Turtle Islands only to find a disgusting pile of guano and not a single turtle.

On the return trip, we admired Cook Mountain which we have climbed on multiple occasions. It was a great day on the clear waters of Lake George.

Opalescent

It was the last weekend before Labor Day and we planned to take a trip that had been on the list all summer, which was a trip up the Opalescent River from its confluence with the Hudson in Tahawus. We brought our Hornbeck boats and spent the afternoon transitioning between paddling and dragging our boats behind us as we walked through the river. We had great views and wonderful solitude as we paddled and picnicked our way up and down the river for a seven-mile trip.

In the evening, we had a picnic dinner at Overlook Park in Newcomb.

The next day, we took the guide boat for a row on Rich Lake in Newcomb and managed to dodge most of the raindrops for the day. We spent the rest of the day at the cabin reading and relaxing!

Long Lake

For one of our last ventures of the summer, we first packed our guide boat and headed to Long Lake for an overnight. We headed north from the launch and found a great campsite on an unnamed island to the south of Round Island. We unpacked gear and rowed north on the Lake, enjoying the mountain views in the distance until we took a break at a beach near Camp Islands. We rowed back to our campsite and spent the evening enjoying the sunset while listening to drumbeats from across the lake.

In the morning, we packed up gear and rowed back to the launch, but then continued rowing south of the bridge and back to the beach for a picnic. We celebrated the trip and the end of summer with malts at Scoops in Newcomb.