Sagamore

For our first venture into the Adirondacks, we wanted to be high class!  Even though we don't have any Vanderbilt blood in our veins, we got to spend the weekend at Sagamore, their former great camp turned non-profit. Located four and a half miles from Raquette Lake village, we chauffeured ourselves along the meandering road. Of course - we were there for their half-price "community weekend;" the black flies were still out!

Upon arrival, we went straight for the boat house and signed out canoes to get onto Sagamore Lake. After we returned my parents (Linda and Steve), sister/brother-in-law (Amy and Mike) with nephew Ben arrived just in time for dinner. Since Tom and Jean rode with us, that gave us a nine person crew with whom to experience the great camp.

After a camp orientation, we went for another paddle just before sunset. Lisa and I made a plan to get up and paddle the shoreline of the lake in the morning. After a night in "Wigwam," a building that we soon learned was used for drinking, gambling and debauchery by the young Vanderbilt men, we awoke just after sunrise. Tom joined us in an aluminum canoe with the bow comically sticking clear out of the water and we made it back in time for 8:00 breakfast.

After breakfast, we explored some of the buildings and attended a slideshow on the history of great camps in the Adirondacks. We then left the camp and headed to Raquette Lake village for a tour on the W. W. Durant - a paddle wheeler (named for the designer of Sagamore) that makes daily tours as well as lunch and dinner cruises on the lake. We saw many of the other great and not-so-great camps around the lake which were owned by Carnegies, Colliers, and Durant himself. The captain was a local who had built the boat and ran the company with his family - he seemed intimately knowledgeable about each structure on the lake.

The blue line below indicates our path on the cruise:

 Returning to Sagamore, we ate our lunches and went on a tour of the many buildings that comprise the Great Camp. This included the worker's complex which employed 40-50 people that would keep Sagamore running seamlessly. The architecture and attention to detail created a rustic impression while allowing for modern conveniences that many city dwellers didn't even enjoy at the time.

One of the worker's buildings:  ......sheesh!

A quick nap and a row on the lake led into meatloaf for dinner. We ate our fill and meandered around the camp and back to "Wigwam" to wait until the bugs went away for the evening. Just outside, we had a campfire at the lean-to with s'mores. We brought out the guitar and fiddle and there was singing around the campfire accompanied with dancing from Lisa's new friend Neveah. We stayed in the lean-to as clouds came and dropped steady rain for a few hours.

The next morning we begrudgingly packed our things and went for a hike around the Lake Trail. It was beautiful weather but the head nets were still necessary due to the black flies. Since it had rained, we took the "high-road" to the bridge and turned around rather than hiking around the entire lake.

We left Sagamore and began a food-filled ride home which included ice-cream at Hoss's in Long Lake and michigans at Gene's in Port Henry (a birthday tradition for Tom). Between food stops we sandwiched in a short hike into Challis Pond in North Hudson in a meager attempt to burn a few calories. It was there that I found this guy posing for a picture:

It's home to pack and off to Lake George tomorrow. Although it might take some adjustment to primitive camping on an island after the high class living at Sagamore...