Adirondack Family Time™

By Diane Chase First Night   celebrations offer  families visiting or living in the Adironacks an opportunity to ring in the New Year in a healthy fashion. Just ten minutes from Lake Placid, Saranac Lake will ring in the New Year with its fifth First Night® celebration.  Originating in Boston over 35 years ago, First Night originators wanted to provide non-alcohol related New Year’s Eve festivities. The arts centered event grew from a small community celebration to what now showcases Boston’s diverse culture and art. There are now 200 similarly modeled celebrations worldwide. In our part of the world,   Saratoga Springs   and   Saranac Lake   are two such sanctioned events. Read More

By Diane Chase Swimming in the heat of the summer can be a chilly affair in the Adirondacks. For the next few months, people across New York State will be cooling off by taking an icy plunge in support of Special Olympic athletes. “Last weekend our first Polar Plunge in Plattsburgh was met with great success.” says New York Special Olympics Associate Director Kaila Horton. “ Between 200-220 people plunged raising over $22,600 dollars in support of the athletes. The Polar Plunge is one of our big fundraisers of the year for Special Olympics.” Read More

By Diane Chase Fighter planes and dogfights are just part of the program for the Mountain R/C Club’s annual air show in Old Forge this July 31st. The sky will be humming with replica WWII radio-controlled planes like the Spitfire, P51 Mustang, B25 Mitchell, F6F Hellcat as well as a few jet aircrafts and other more recent models. Event Director Walt Throne says, “ We are looking forward to having the same format as in years past. There will be a variety of planes and helicopters on the 31st.” Read more

By Diane Chase Jack and the Beanstalk may be considered a children’s story but the undertones of the Seagle Music Colony’s operatic rendition leaves anyone with an appreciation for music with his/her own interpretation. The giant does get his in the end, but it is not the end one is expecting. For adults there is the rich performance of the four gifted students and children listen in awe to a magical story. The bonus is being able to meet the fairytale characters, come-to-life, after the show. Read More

By Diane Chase Watching the Lake Placid Horse Show may be intimidating for anyone without a background in Show Jumping but don't let inexperience allow a wonderful event to pass by. (My horse experiences consist of trail rides on only the oldest and most gentle animals.) For a dollar you can take a walking tour and learn the ins and outs of jumping. The Lake Placid Horse Show Association offers weekday in-depth visits behind the scenes of the grounds. The tour meets in the vendor section of the horse grounds. Read More

Celebrating its 10th anniversary the Lake Placid Film Forum is showcasing women in the film industry, new directions in filmmaking and an environmental “green” focus in additional to its annual tribute to silent film. Opening night on June 10th will be a bargain for families at $10 for two Buster Keaton movies and a foreign short “Salim Baba.” The Keaton films will show his career in reverse starting with the 1965 “Railrodder” with a Q&A with the film’s director Gerry Potterton then segue to the 1924 silent film “Sherlock Jr.” Read More

Learning to ride a bicycle has as many stages as learning to walk, though walking seems to come with less drama. First the scooter stage (quad-cycle,) then on to the tricycle, which leads to training wheels. Finally that two-wheeled sense of freedom is achieved. Each stage brings a different challenge. For my family, each stage was clung to with white-knuckled intensity. Read More Here

The 45-minute opera of The Three Little Pigs will be held at the Charles R. Wood Theatre in Glens Falls free of charge at 1:00 p.m. on March 27. According to Executive Director Bill Woodward seating for the operatic performance at the Wood Theatre is on a first-come, first-serve basis. The 299-seat theatre will be open a half-hour before show time. “This a great opportunity for kids to come and see opera where it is reachable. It is a fairy tale and children are mesmerized with the singing. It’s a good way to assimilate them to opera,” says Woodward. “Parents will enjoy it just as much as the kids.” Read More

Shane Holmes of Blueline Geocachers also encourages non-geocachers to come to the 4th annual Mid-Winter Get-Together. The event is free and registration is not required. Bring a lunch or grab something from a local vendor. Anyone without a GPS and is interested, Holmes will gladly pair with other geocachers to introduce the activity. Holmes states,“Geocaching is great exercise. You get outside, hike, swim and are introduced to places that perhaps you haven’t seen before. Some people have never done anything like this outside so it opens up a new opportunity to see something of esthetic value. For others, it gets them off the computer. ” The Long Lake event will be held at the Long Lake Town Hall/Fire Hall (N 43° 58.352 W 074° 25.215)
 from 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. read more

The USA Luge team, headquartered in Lake Placid, gives free tours of their facility every weekday at 2:00 p.m. This week the Olympic luge team and most of the staff are in Vancouver supporting their athletes so tours will resume the week of the 22nd. Read More

TNot only will this December 31st be a day for throwing out the old and ringing in the new it also has the unusual status of commonly being known as a blue moon. Hopefully the prediction for snow won’t hamper anyone’s New Year eve festivities. Though 2010 will come regardless of the “ball dropping,” champagne, sparking cider or streamers. A popular belief is that the second Full Moon of the month is a "blue moon." A second moon in a month is a rare occurrence, every 2.72 years to be exact so if old sayings hold true if something is happening “once in a blue moon” it truly is an occasion for celebrating. Read more

The Champlain Valley Film Society will be celebrating its 100th film with a free showing of classic Katharine Hepburn/Humphrey Bogart film The African Queen. In 1952, this film won Humphrey Bogart his only Oscar though he had been nominated for Casablanca and The Caine Mutiny. Read more

If you missed the live stream of the The Adirondack Youth Climate Summit that took place this past weekend at the Wild Center, please check out the video of the event. Workshops were scheduled throughout the two-day event pairing students with experienced personnel to inspire the 150 participants to come up with working models to green their schools and communities. Twenty high schools and six universities participated in this inaugural event. These institutions will serve as models in energy efficiency, sustainable energy usage, building maintenance, landscaping & grounds management, school & community garden planning, and how to affect the current science curriculum in schools. Read more

Here is my latest post on Adirondack Almanack. I wonder though how many children really know what the origin of a harvest festival is. My children are not required to tend the field and therefore do not require a celebration from such backbreaking work. Their idea of the harvest is face painting and jugglers. The only items my children harvest are the occasional pumpkin or basket of apples on a school field trip. Read more

This year we will be hunting space aliens in Gabriels. Yes, crop circles have been found in the Adirondacks, though this time they can be proven the direct result of human effort, not the paranormal. For the fourth year in a row the design for the maze at Tucker Farms is from the artistic work of Scott Rohe. He didn’t even have to perpetuate any crop circle myth by going out in the dead of night to complete the large-scale land art. He just came up with the design so the Tuckers could plant the corn in a grid-like pattern. To read more

This is long overdue but I am honored to announce that I have been asked to contribute a weekly family activity to the Adirondack Almanack blog. I hope you enjoy! -Diane