1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (29 page)

The village of Lake Placid, site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics, maintains its role as “Winter Sports Capital of the World” and includes an Olympic Museum. International athletes still train at its world-class skating rinks, ski jumps, and the world’s fastest bobsled run. Whiteface Mountain, scene of the downhill competitions, has the steepest vertical drop in the East as well as a trail system popular with families and beginners.

Mirror Lake Inn, a 128-room white clapboard, green-shuttered resort with one of the best locations in the country, is tucked away
on 7 acres overlooking Mirror Lake. The mahogany and marble inn is more clubby than rustic, with private lakefront beaches to complement the region’s compelling winter sports (including dogsled rides). Famous for its signature Adirondack flapjacks, the inn offers the sanctuary of a plush spa.

Lake Placid and Saranac Lake are reached by way of High Peaks Scenic Byway (Route 73), a 48-mile stretch that winds through the Adirondack Park’s tallest mountains, including Big Slide, in the north. The Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake holds more than 2,500 works of art, including Adirondack scenes by major American artists Thomas Cole and Winslow Homer, and dioramas that bring to life a vanished world of logging camps, Victorian hotels, and hermit cabins.

At 4,715 feet, the views from Mount Colden’s summit are spectacular.

W
HERE
: 250 miles north of New York City.
Adirondack visitor info:
Tel 518-846-8016;
www.adirondacks.org
.
Lake Placid visitor info:
Tel 800-44-PLACID or 518-523-2445;
www.lakeplacid.com
.
T
HE
P
OINT:
Saranac Lake. Tel 800-255-3530 or 518-891-5674;
www.thepointresort.com
.
Cost:
from $1,250, includes meals and drinks.
L
AKE
P
LACID
L
ODGE:
Lake Placid. Tel 877-523-2700 or 518-523-2700;
www.lakeplacidlodge.com
.
Cost:
rooms from $400; dinner $65.
O
LYMPIC
C
ENTER AND
M
USEUM:
Lake Placid. Tel 800-462-6236 or 518-523-1655;
www.whitefacelakeplacid.com
.
S
UMMER
S
TORM
B
OBSLED
R
IDE:
Lake Placid. Tel 518-523-4436.
When:
June–early Oct.
W
HITEFACE
M
OUNTAIN:
Wilmington. Tel 518-946-2223;
www.whiteface.com
.
Cost:
lift tickets $65.
When:
ski season, late Nov–mid-Apr.
M
IRROR
L
AKE
I
NN:
Lake Placid. Tel 518-523-2544;
www.mirrorlakeinn.com
.
Cost:
from $220 (off-peak), from $275 (peak).
H
IGH
P
EAKS
S
CENIC
B
YWAY:
www.byways.org
.
T
HE
A
DIRONDACK
M
USEUM:
Blue Mountain Lake. Tel 518-352-7311;
www.adkmuseum.org
.
When:
late May–mid-Oct.
B
EST TIMES
: late June for Lake Placid Film Festival; early Aug for Lumberjack Days; early Sept for the Rustic Fair (sale of handmade Adirondack furniture) at the Adirondack Museum.

A City’s Most Famous Export

Buffalo, New York

Anchor Bar near downtown Buffalo may seem like just another funky joint with a Harley-Davidson hanging from the ceiling, but the modest red brick building is the hallowed site where “buffalo wings” were born back
in 1964. Teresa Bellissimo was in the kitchen when her bartender son, Dominic, asked her to whip up something for a bunch of ravenous friends. Ever frugal, she took chicken wings destined for the stock pot, threw them in the deep fryer, tossed them with melted margarine
and hot sauce, then served them with blue cheese dressing and celery on the side. The impromptu dish spread like wildfire, becoming a beloved snack of choice in sports bars and family restaurants throughout the country, but true-blue wing devotees make the pilgrimage to this unassuming birthplace to experience the genius first put forth over 40 years ago.

In 2002, Buffalo hosted the first National Buffalo Wing Festival. Over Labor Day more than 25 restaurants from as far as Colorado serve 20 tons of chicken wings to 70,000 people, vying for the longest lines and prizes like Best of Show, Best Traditional, and the controversial Best Creative. Miss Buffalo Wing contestants must prove they know the difference between mild, medium, and hot wings—and recite Shakespeare to boot. The bobbing-for-wings competition gets pretty messy as goggled participants nab as many wings as possible from a kiddie pool filled with blue cheese.

Since the first National Buffalo Wing Festival attendees have consumed more than a million chicken wings.

Buffalo locals are equally passionate about a dish called beef on ’weck, created by piling rare roast beef onto a hard roll sprinkled with caraway seeds and coarse salt and dipped in beef juice, topped off with eye-watering horseradish. The unique appeal of this hearty sandwich is best experienced at Schwabl’s, whose dining rooms haven’t changed much since 1942, down to the oilcloth table covers and the waitresses in white uniforms and matching shoes.

Every year the much awaited Taste of Buffalo, the country’s second largest food festival after Chicago’s (see p. 493), gives 400,000 hungry folks the chance to see what else the city has to offer, from Cajun Crab Puffs to Beef and Sausage Gumbo.

W
HERE
: 398 miles northwest of New York City.
Visitor info:
Tel 800-BUFFALO or 716-852-0511;
www.visitbuffaloniagara.com
.
A
NCHOR
B
AR:
Tel 716-886-8920;
www.anchorbar.com
.
Cost:
10 wings, $8.
N
ATIONAL
B
UFFALO
W
ING
F
ESTIVAL:
Tel 716-565-4141;
www.buffalowing.com
.
When:
early Sept.
S
CHWABL’S
R
ESTAURANT:
West Seneca. Tel 716-674-9821.
Cost:
beef on ’weck $8.
T
ASTE OF
B
UFFALO:
www.tasteofbuffalo.com
.
When:
early July.

Prayer, Dogs, and Cheesecake

Cambridge, New York

Amountaintop retreat in the Taconic range of upstate New York just 2 hilly miles from the Vermont border, New Skete is a small religious community of Eastern Orthodox monks, nuns, and lay companions. They are known
primarily to the outside world for two curious pursuits at which they have been remarkably successful and nationally recognized: German shepherds and cheesecake.

A bright red compound centered around a rustic chapel topped with gold-leaf onion domes so brilliant that local pilots use them as a point of reference, the monastery is a very special place where visitors are welcome to spend time in the meditation gardens, hike the 500-acre property, or join the twice-daily services when the Orthodox liturgy is chanted in a transcendental four-part harmony.

The monks, who started the contemplative community in 1966, believe that man is meant to be happy in this life, not just the next. To achieve economic self-sufficiency they began breeding, training, and selling German shepherds and inadvertently became superstars in the world of dog training with their cult classics,
How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend
and
The Art of Raising a Puppy,
which have sold nearly a million copies and generated so much demand for their puppies that requests are difficult to fill.

New Skete, named for one of the first Christian monastic settlements (in the desert of Skete in northern Egypt), became a rarity in the world of monasteries when, in 1969, it welcomed a group of nuns, who settled on a hilltop a respectable 3 miles away. Today the Nuns of New Skete have trumped their fellow brothers with the success of their classic New York–style cheesecakes produced in a calorie-laced array of flavors that are prized by local restaurants and fans in all 50 states.

Hundreds of visitors converge on the monastery in June when the nearby crossroads of Cambridge has its annual Balloon Festival and the monks offer tours and demonstrations of dog training. On a Saturday in early August retreatants arrive (almost all return visitors) for the Annual Pilgrimage—time spent discussing issues that may range from the rewards of monastic life to the origin and history of religious icons.

Pilgrims are welcomed in modest but comfortable accommodations—men with the monks, women with the nuns, and couples with the lay companions (a third community of married couples). You can stay as long as you please, doing whatever you’d like, whether reading, praying, pulling weeds, helping socialize the puppies, or giving a hand in the kitchen.

W
HERE:
40 miles northeast of Albany. Tel 518-677-3928;
www.newsketemonks.com
.
When:
closed Mon.
Cost:
accommodations $50 per night, includes meals.
N
UNS OF
N
EW
S
KETE:
Tel 518-677-3810;
www.newskete.com
.
B
EST TIMES
: early June for Balloon Festival; early Aug for Pilgrimage.

Of Borscht and Buddha

New York

With a wild beauty that captured the imagination of great painters like Thomas Cole, the Catskills have been an on-again, off-again vacation destination for 200 years. In the 19th century, trains from
New York City made it an easy way to escape the beastly summer heat, still a motivator for the ever-growing numbers of weekenders and second-home hunters looking for the last great deal.

In the 20th century, European immigrants found the Catskills’ scenic beauty reminiscent of the old country. Sullivan County became the center of the summer Borscht Belt universe with primarily Jewish bungalow colonies,
all-you-can-eat buffets, mambo nights, and expansive family resorts like Browns, the Concord, and Grossingers, where Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar got their starts. At the southern edge of the Catskill Forest Park, Delaware County is still very much a farming community whose “cow country” authenticity is an irresistible lure for city sophisticates, while at the northernmost reaches of the park, Greene County holds some of the most dramatic peaks and the best skiing in winter.

But today it’s the very heart of the Catskills in Ulster County that appeals most to urbanites looking for a Walden Pond escape, with beautiful mountain interiors of deep forests and hidden waterfalls. Woodstock, where Bob Dylan and The Band hung out in the ’60s, is the Catskills’ most famous town, best known for the 1969 rock concert. Woodstock has had a bohemian streak since the early 1900s, when artists, writers, and alternative thinkers settled here. Today its tie-dyed heritage is slowly giving way to the film-and-fashion crowd most evident during the Woodstock Film Festival, considered one of the best independent film festivals in the country.

Meanwhile, to the south, Bethel has gotten a high dose of style and culture with the new Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, a 4,800-seat summer pavilion with space on the lawn for 12,000 more. They come for the variety of artists and musical styles, from an annual jazz festival to contemporary pop artists, as well as rock, country, and classical concerts. Bethel also has a hall dedicated to the 1969 Woodstock concert, telling its story and influence on American culture.