A Long Weekend in the Adirondacks, New York State

Come for the Views

I found the Adirondacks to have some of the most beautiful scenery in the eastern US. In fact, it was a photograph of the view from the Indian Head lookout that initially inspired me to visit.

I mean, look at this! Views like these are what I live for, so I planned my trip around making this hike.

Where We Stayed

I wanted to camp in a beautiful setting and found Heart Lake Wilderness Campground, which ticked all the boxes. (If you don’t want to rough it, try the Adirondack Loj at Heart Lake on the same property. Or book one of their canvas cabins.) We visited over the long Fourth of July weekend.

I loved this campground. It’s busy during the day with day trippers coming out to use the trails, but in the evening it gets quiet. The campground has 54 sites in all, setting it way apart from the typical public campgrounds with hundreds of sites. After dinner, we could walk five minutes to the lake where we’d have the sunset nearly to ourselves.

Tip: Bug Spray is your friend.

The rest of the itinerary came together easily.

Our Itinerary

For everything else I put together a list of all the stuff I was interested in doing during this trip and we decided to play it all by ear.

The Wild Walk at the Wild Center
High Falls Gorge
Whiteface Mountain Drive
Cascade Mountain Hike
Ausable Chasm
Canoeing or Kayaking with Adirondack Outfitters

But then I came across the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga and I was like hell yeah we are definitely doing that. I booked the special tour of the set with the creator James Cawley for 3 pm on Saturday.

Ultimately we couldn’t fit everything in, but we’ll be back.

Day	Overnight	Itinerary
1	Hilton Garden Inn, Albany SUNY Area	Leave Philly area at 5 pm, arrive at hotel around 9 pm
2	Wilderness Campground at Heart Lake	Stop at Adirondack Buffalo Co. en route; Ausable Chasm - Classic Tour (trails and scenic float tour); Lunch at despo's; camp setup and walk at Heart Lake
3	Wilderness Campground at Heart Lake	Indian Head trail hike
4	Wilderness Campground at Heart Lake	Whiteface Mountain drive and short hike to top; Star Trek Original Series Set Tour with James Cawley; sunset walk at Heart Lake
5	Home	Drive home

Days 1-2: Ausable Chasm and Setting Up Camp

I wanted to get a head start on our trip, so we left the Philly area at 5 pm on Friday and drove four hours to Albany where we stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn.

In the morning, we had just a couple of hours to drive to reach the Adirondacks High Peaks region. Since check-in at the campground wasn’t until 2, we took our time driving through this scenic region. We stopped for gas across the street from the old Frontier Town western park that now stands in ruin.

Then we made our way over to the nearby Adirondack Buffalo Company to stock up on dinner ingredients for the weekend. We love to try local foods on our trips, and we found excellent camp food here. We bought burger patties, buffalo steaks, cheese curds and some homemade pickles to throw in the cooler.

A Hike and Float Through Ausable Chasm

New York state is chock full of beautiful gorges. It all started in the ice age when glacial sediment gathered here. Over eons, the sand and mud deposited by the glaciers turned into sandstone and shale, and over thousands of years streams and rivers carved the incredible gorges we have today.

Ausable Chasm, like Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes region, is a stunning place to hike through. Watkins Glen is more objectively beautiful with its mile of stone steps and bridges, but Ausable Chasm still wows, and you can do a short rafting or tubing trip at the end of your hike.

If you’re feeling more adventurous or have kids, you might want to do the Premium Tour which includes the Adventure Trail. This is a series of cargo net climbs, cable bridges and edge walking in the canyon.

We booked the Classic Tour, which includes the Inner Sanctum Trail and the float trip. It’s not so much a tour as it is entrance to the trails and either rafting or tubing at the end. Tubing is independent but the rafting will include a guide.

The trail itself was lovely and happily not too crowded for a holiday weekend. We did have to wait about 30 minutes to get on the raft, but we spent that time watching other rafters get in and float away through the canyon. The rafting trip is short – it takes about 15 minutes, and your feet will get wet. The tubing looked like a lot of fun as well and you can do it at your own pace.

There is a trolley stop just up the steps from where you get out of the raft or your tube. The trolley will bring you back to the visitor center.

In the afternoon we had lunch at Desperado’s in Lake Placid, or Despo’s as the locals call it. It’s a Mexican restaurant with an Irish twist located in a little strip mall. A local haunt, for sure. I was skeptical when walking in but they had surprisingly good food and strong margaritas.

After lunch we went to the grocery store across the street to outfit ourselves with the rest of the food and beer we’d need.

Tip: The trick to being able to shop on the fly for a camping trip is having a well-stocked camp kitchen. We have a modded Amazon fresh bag with some cheap office storage inside to organize our stuff. We have all of our dishes and silverware, as well as spices, cooking oil, ketchup and mustard, instant coffee, and a few other things that make camp cooking easy.

Earl designed and outfitted this thing himself! I can’t imagine camping without it now.

On the way to the campground I had to stop at the picturesque Whitebrook Dairy Bar in Wilmington.

It was about 4:30 pm when we finally checked in at the campground. Here we set up our new tent for the first time. We’d been camping in a tiny backpacking tent for a couple of years, which is great for cool weather but terrible in hot weather. I wanted something bigger with more ventilation for summer camping and we found the Big House 4 by Big Agnes on sale at REI. We bought the optional vestibule and loved it for keeping stuff like camp chairs dry and out of sight while we’re gone for the day.

Day 3: Indian Head Hike

Indian Head is what brought us to the Adirondacks. I had to see this view for myself.

What is technically a 3 mile round-trip hike for members of the private Ausable Club at the Adirondack Mountain Reserve is a 10 mile round-trip hike for the rest of us. You see, the public is not permitted to park on Ausable Club property or to avail themselves of the bus to the trail head that members enjoy. Nope, you can’t even buy a ticket. They will drive right past you even if the bus is mostly empty. This certainly helps to keep the place uncrowded, which it was, but it also felt pretty elitist.

What us public people need to do it park at the St. Hubert’s parking area in Keene Valley just off of Route 73. We arrived at 8 am and the lot was almost full so get there as early as possible. You are permitted to arrive as early as 4 am.

Tip: Bring lots of water and a pair of trekking poles – the poles will help you with your footing and balance on the ascent and descent. I honestly can’t recommend trekking poles enough. They give me confidence on uneven surfaces and they make the hike feel less strenuous.

From the parking lot, walk up the gravel Ausable Road. After a quarter mile, it will become paved and eventually the forest will open up to a golf course. How lovely! (Not really.) Just after the tennis courts you’ll make a left, following the sign directing hikers to the trail head. Sign in, then walk through the admittedly gorgeous big wooden gate and you are on your way. The trails are all well-marked and you won’t get lost unless you try.

Here’s a Google map of where to park and the path leading to the trail head at the Ausable Club:

If the Upper East Side is where you go to observe the wealthy in their home environment, walking through the Ausable Club grounds is where you can observe them playing at “roughing it”. When walking the half mile up the road from the parking area, golf carts zoomed past us carrying well-dressed seniors, and at the top we watched a group of fresh young polo-shirt-and-khaki-shorts-sporting men tee off.

At the trail head register, we signed in and read the trail rules. Only certain trails are open to the public, and sitting or standing for too long on the gravel road “trail” is not permitted. I read this as “You’re an eyesore for our club members so keep moving.” I’m sure they would say this has to do with safety.

Only slightly bitter, we move along.

The problem with this hike is that if you stay on the gravel road, it’s not really hiking. It’s road walking. So the Gill Brook trail is the saving grace of this day.

About two miles up the gravel road on the left is the entrance. Take it. It’s a small trail wide enough for one person with lots of roots and rocks to navigate. It follows the curves of the stream that runs generally parallel to the gravel road. It may take a little longer, but it’s a beautiful (and empty) alternative with a few waterfalls to check out on the way.

After about a mile and a half the Gill Brook trail meets the Indian Head trail and we started to see other hikers. At this point, the trail gets very steep with several areas of stone and wooden steps. It took us maybe another hour of huffing and puffing to get to the viewpoint, but the payoff is absolutely worth it.

I was feeling pretty good all the way up, but going down the steep trail to the road was tough on my legs. I’m an enthusiastic but overweight hiker so you might fare better. For me, this ten mile hike is about as much as I can handle in one day.

On our return walk through the Ausable Club grounds, we watched an elderly woman dressed in a pristine white tennis dress receive a lesson from a gorgeous young man with a sexy accent. I bumbled by, watching the lesson, sweaty and rumpled in my discount hiking gear. It was 2 pm when we finally got back the car – so 6 hours all in, with about 30 minutes spent at the top. Let me tell you how great it felt to get back to our campsite and crawl in to my hammock.

Good. Really, really good.

Day 4: Whiteface Mountain Road & Star Trek The Original Series Set Tour

Maybe this wasn’t the best day to drive up Whiteface Mountain. Clouds and rain were in the forecast, and sure enough the entrance to the toll highway had a sign informing guests that the visibility at the top was 0 miles.

We paid anyway and drove up, passing cyclists pedaling their way to the top. The road gains 2400 feet of elevation over five miles, which is steep but not nearly as extreme as the road leading up to Mount Washington.

When I was 10 my family drove our giant 12 passenger van up the Mount Washington auto road and my mom panicked so hard she made my dad drop her off halfway up. Then, he bought the bumper sticker that says “This Car Climbed Mount Washington” at the gift shop and wrote “And 4 out of 5 of us made it” on it. He slapped that thing on the van forever and he still talks about it 25 years later.

Not to worry mom, there are no extreme drop offs or totally blind curves on the road up to Whiteface.

So it was true, visibility was 0 miles at the top, but it was awesome! We walked the gorgeous stone staircase up to the observatory and wandered around the top for 30 minutes or so.

We walked back down the steps and Earl captured this photo of me:

And on the drive back down the road, we stopped at a pullout where the clouds lifted enough to give us this view:

After leaving the highway and starting toward Ticonderoga, we were driving down a scenic back road when Earl slammed on the breaks and did a three point turn.

“What is it?!!” I asked him but he was already jumping out of the car to pick something up from the pavement. When he stood up, he was grasping a tiny baby snapping turtle between his thumb and forefinger. The little guy (or girl) must have just climbed out of the mud and was trying to make its way to the pond across the street.

So we helped it along.

Tip: Impromptu baby turtle rescue is a good reason to carry hand sanitizer with you at all times.

Star Trek Original Series Set Tour, Ticonderoga NY

You guys, I’m telling you that even if you are not a Star Trek fan, this place is well worth a visit. Do yourself a favor and spring for one of the special James Cawley-led set tours for $35 per person.

From the website:

“Trek superfan James Cawley began the process of rebuilding the sets just as they would have been seen 50 years ago when the series was being filmed, a 14 year journey has culminated in the most accurate rebuild of the original sets, and is now open and welcoming STAR TREK fans from all over the world!”

But what they don’t mention is that James Cawley is also an Elvis impersonator. So there you are touring the Enterprise with James and his perfect Elvis pompadour and sideburns. It’s an out-of-this-world experience if there ever was one.

I highly recommend checking out this incredible labor of love. James Cawley has got to be one of the most fascinating people you’ll ever meet.

That evening by the time we got back to camp, the rain had passed. We grilled our steaks for dinner and then took a walk at the lake to enjoy the sunset on our last night in the Adirondacks.

Back at camp, we lit a campfire. Earl played some guitar. We did not make s’mores because they’re gross and that’s a hill I will die on.

In the morning, we let ourselves leisurely make breakfast and break down our camp. Check out is 11 am and we left just in time. Then it was about 6.5 hours back to Philly in holiday weekend traffic, all-in-all not bad.

My takeaway from this trip is that it will easily make it on to our semi-annual shortlist of long weekends from Philly. There is still so much I want to do in the region, and I can’t wait to come back to the Adirondack Wilderness Campground.

Please let me know if you found this post helpful, or if you have any suggestions for our next trip. Thank you for reading!