Adirondack Family Time™

For those of us not fortunate to have wildlife come to us, we need to go to the experts. This winter Adirondack raptor experts are offering opportunities to come across such majestic creatures as the snowy owl, or at the very least learn how to sight them on your own.

I’m not sure how it happened, but I didn’t get to ski as I much as I would have liked this winter. My snowshoes got plenty of use as did my Microspikes, but my skis have been completely neglected. To make up for lost time, we head for a quick ski along the Fish Pond trail to St. Regis Pond in Lake Clear. Accessing ponds and lakes in summer is sometimes a bit easier than finding a safe pullover to access the same trail in winter. With that in mind, we enter the trail just east of Kempton Rd on Route 30 in Lake Clear. As there is no dedicated parking on Rt. 30, we pull the car over, put on our gear and follow the ski tracks through the woods. We find that there is plenty of snow and the trails are well used.

March 24:  Special Tour Marking World TB Day: Tour the grounds of the former Trudeau Sanatorium. Meet at 1 pm  inside the Park Avenue gates, where street parking is available. Tour is free of charge. Call  518-891-4606  to reserve a spot .  May 1: Daffest Walking Tour:  A walking historic tour will leave Riverside Park at 10:30 am  led by Director of Historic Saranac Lake, Amy Catania. Your group will stroll from Riverside Park along the shores of Lake Flower to the Bartok Cabin. $5/person, free to Historic Saranac Lake members. In May -- History Matters Seminar Series: We are planning our third annual spring seminar series, featuring topics of local history. Stay tuned for a schedule of talks. May 13:  Preservation Celebration: featuring workshop sessions on window preservation, the National Register and the rehabilitation tax credit program, followed by a hard hat tour of the Hotel Saranac. More details and registration informati...

Celebrate the spring season with everything maple  in Thurman, NY! March 22 - 23 and March 29 - 30 Pancakes served at 190 Valley Road, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. High school kids serve hot dogs and more, 151 Chas. Olds Rd.,  11 a.m. - 3 p.m. Check out the schedule above!

There are a variety of places that a person can visit to see maple sap collected, especially this weekend as maple producers join together for the first of two New York State  Maple Producers Association Maple Weekends , March 22-22 and 29-30. My husband and I have had our experiences (and disagreements) with making maple syrup. It is hard work, but each year we can say we did it. We enjoy attending other large-scale  producers so we can continually fine-tune our own backyard maple-making system.    In order for the sap to flow temperatures must rise above freezing during the day and drop below freezing at night. Depending on where you visit t his weekend should not be a problem. It is supposed to be high 30s in certain areas, allowing the sap to thaw and flow throughout the day. This is a great weekend activity for families.  Each producer may have different activities planned such as samplings, face painting, petting zoos and horse-drawn wagon rides. I...

© Diane Chase, Adirondack Family Time By Diane Chase An Adirondack Full Moon Ski, Hike or Swim?  One Adirondack family activity we always enjoy is taking our cross-country skies and hitting a trail. The kids find it exciting and we get to experience nature in a new way.  You can take your family to enjoy a planned event or find a quiet place and have kids find out what animals are starting to wake up at night! Always bring a headlamp whether you are out on your favorite trail or participating in an organized event! Enjoy!

The Sugarmaker’s Companion includes:  A focus on maple syrup as a healthy, local, sustainably produced alternative to corn syrup and other highly processed artificial sweeteners; Discussions about organic certification, sugarhouse registration, and the new international grading system; Information on marketing to create a profitable business model based on scale, interest, access, and more; Detailed analyses of the economics of buying and selling sap; Information on ways to process and market other tree saps, including birch and walnut; Ways to enhance diversity in the sugarbush and interplant understory crops for value-added products such as ginseng, goldenseal, and mushrooms; and, An economic analysis of utilizing maple trees for syrup or sawtimber production. In addition, readers and sugarmakers will learn plenty of practical, how-to skills, such as: If, and on what scale, syrup production is right for them; How to find trees for tapping; The essentials of ...