New York–Pennsylvania

We left Vermont and took a little detour to go to Lake George, New York.  This is located in the Adirondacks mountains and is a tourist destination.  Yes, IT IS A TOURIST DESTINATION!  The traffic was unbelievable.  We arrived on Thursday at a very nice RV park located about 5 miles outside Lake George Village.  The park was large and the majority of spaces were for seasonals, but the sites were huge and were in a large forest of pine trees.  This park is one of the nicest we have ever stayed at.

After we arrived we were checking out the tourist books to see what was going on and discovered that during the summer the town shoots off fireworks over the lake every Thursday night.  After dinner we headed into town to take a look at the town and to watch the fireworks.  We made it to the town limits and the traffic stopped because of all the tourists.  We quickly found a parking lot that would hold our truck and decided to walk the town instead of driving through it.  A great decision as the traffic barely moved through the town.  The town is right on the lake and has many shops, restaurants, nightly entertainment and water activities.  We had a nice walk through the town and then waited for the fireworks to start at 9:30pm.  We found a place to sit near the water and the show was spectacular.  A very nice show put on by the town.  Fortunately it was not hard to get back out of town and to our RV park.

On Friday we decided to take a boat cruise on the lake.  It was  2 hour cruise that takes you 10 miles up the lake to the next town and returns.  The cruise takes you by the old millionaire mansions (those that remain) and by the famous hotel, The Sagamore.  We first had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the water which was neat as we got to watch the parasailers.  The weather was great so the cruise was very pleasant and informative. 

Parasailing

Our cruise ship

A view of the lake standing on the dock in town

One of the remaining millionaire mansions.  These are from the 1920’s when the rich from New York City would come to Lake George during the summer.

The Sagamore hotel

After Lake George we headed south and stopped in Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania, where we are as I write this.  This is near Scranton.  The park is mainly for seasonals and had only a handful of spaces for transients.  It is on a lake but none of the spaces available for transients are on the lake (disappointed).  Nice place to stop for a night or two.  We did go out exploring yesterday and ended up at Bushkill Falls.  This is a privately owned park that has eight waterfalls with trails to walk throughout the park and see the falls.  This was some exercise walking up hundreds of steps and walking over 3 miles to see the falls, but the scenery was beautiful.

The main falls

Another one

Just a sample of the one set of stairs we walked

And another waterfall

We are off tomorrow, Friday, for a weekend stopover in West Virginia.  We then are on to Charlottesville, Virginia to see Thomas Jefferson’s house, then a stop in southern Virginia for our anniversary and then into Knoxville on Thursday.