Exploring Upstate

We plan to get into Albany on August 1. That gives us less than two weeks to unpack and settle in before orientation starts. In other words, we’re not going to have a whole lot of time to explore Upstate New York (and we’ll have even less money to do so). So we made it a priority to get out of Albany and explore more of Upstate New York.

After the frustration of trying to find a place to live, we more than welcomed the distraction of exploring a new place. We started with Saratoga Springs, home to world famous horseracing. The town itself is quaint. Congress Park, in the middle of town, is a beautiful small park right in the middle of downtown Saratoga Springs. We had an amazing breakfast at Beverly's including the most amazing Eggs Benedict I’ve ever seen. After that, we explored the old mansions along Union Ave and drove by the racetrack (which we’ll be exploring more after we get out there).

After exploring the town, we headed out to the Saratoga Battlefield. In 1777, the British commander, Burgoyne, was marching his army south toward Albany. The Colonials effectively funneled Burgoyne’s forces toward the Hudson River dictating the terms of the battle. Burgoyne won a hard fought battle against the Colonials on September 19, 1777, but the victory was so costly that Burgoyne decided to entrench his forces and wait for reinforcements from New York City. The reinforcements never came and on October 7, Burgoyne decided to try and fight his way through the Colonial lines. The decision was a mistake. After losing 1,000 men, Burgoyne had to surrender when almost 20,000 Colonials surrounded his exhausted army of 6,000.

Above is a Colonial canon. The fence post in front of the canon indicates the Colonial front. Red fence posts, like the one below, indicate the British front.

After exploring the battlefield, it was off to the Adirondacks. The Adirondacks is the largest National Park in New York and comprises a huge portion of the state. We took Interstate 87 into the Adirondacks, but eventually got off the Interstate to explore the small, twisting roads that run through the region. Many follow old mountain strems such as the one below.

We continued heading north in the Adirondacks until we reached the Lake Placid, home of the 1980 Winter Olympics. We grabbed a bite to eat at a local pub and snapped this shot of Mirror Lake.

As it turns out, we spent too much time at the battlefield. We missed being able to take a run down the bobsled course by about 30-minutes (the sleds run on rollers in the summer). We headed home from Lake Placid and went out to conqueror the Catskills the next day.

In some ways, the Catskills were very similar to the Adirondacks. Mountain streams and lakes were everywhere and thanks to all the recent rain, all the creeks were up and the trees were a beautiful green. The highlight of the trip was the Kaaterskills Falls.

While Niagara may be better known, the Kaaterskills Falls are taller. In fact, they are the tallest falls in the state at 260-feet. As you can see from the pictures below, the falls are not well developed. There is not even a handrail to protect visitors. You can dangle your feet over the edge or snap a shot from above (as I did in the picture below).

Unfortunately, roadwork closed off the only access to the bottom of the falls that we knew of, so we couldn’t get any pictures from below. Obviously, there is a way to get to the bottom. If you look at a larger version of the image above, you can see pople standing at the base of the falls looking up.

From the Catskills, we headed back to New York City. We’ll talk more about our city experience later.