I randomly picked Lake George as a two week stop on our trip up to Maine, spurned on by travel guides and friends’ reports of the destination over the years. It wasn’t the best fit for our current adventure, but I can definitely see the appeal. As we limped, I mean, drove the final leg of our trip into town, I noticed that there was a little bit of everything from outlet stores and cute speciality stores to amusement parks and mini golf. Any given day, we spotted a dozen RVs in the ten minute stretch before our entrance to the highway. This is an area that has truly capitalized on its amazing natural beauty and there are RV parks everywhere. When we were calling to find a spot, we had three main criteria: a campground that could accommodate our big rig, a campground that could accommodate us over the Fourth of July without making us switch campsites, and a great wifi connection so that John could easily work from inside the RV.
We arrived at Whippoorwill after it had been raining all day in Lake George which means there was a lot of mud and mushy ground. That’s never fun for trying to park and level the RV. As we call campgrounds, we always pull out both the park map and google maps to see how much room the site will have and what kind of natural foliage will line our property (i.e. we like more space and trees behind us). The manager had sold us on this spot because it was right next to the campground’s “private entrance” (aka six foot opening in the fence) to the bike trail. Google maps could not have prepared us for the tree layout in the back loop where we were staying. This was, hands down, John’s toughest parking job, and it was nail-biting to watch. Because we have a dually (that’s that extra set of tires in the back that helps us haul all this weight), it’s wider than usual and trying to navigate the sides of the truck, the back of the RV and all the trees was like the world’s worst labyrinth. As my heart pumped in my chest, I had this image of a toddler with his head stuck in the stair railing. To make matters worse, our neighbor had parked in our spot (which seemed to be common practice at this campsite given the parking area at each campsite was limited); John asked him to move his vehicle, no problem. But then, he proceeded to try to “help,” and I urged John to let him help because I was afraid I was going to navigate him into a tree, electric box, or big stone fire pit. “Alternate Randy” (we named him after the helpful Randy at our very first campsite because their fifth wheels looked very similar) later let us know that this was only his third trip out with his RV, so he didn’t really know what he was doing either. John finally wiggled and wriggled the RV into the space. This became a slight issue when we departed the campground because our hitch was twisted. Luckily, YouTube has most of the answers to your home improvement and RV needs and we found some work around to still get hitched up and then better secure everything once we were straightened out. In order to fit on the space and not hang out onto the road, our back window was so close to the chain link fence between the RV park and the bike path that I could have easily reached out the window to touch it. I was incredulous that the manager had really though that a 41’ travel trailer could “easily” fit in this spot.
The next morning, John left bright and early to take Dennis to the “doctor.” I awoke to mud and the day only got messier. I had a professional recently reference homeschool kids as sometimes being “a little feral.” In her defense, she was saying positive things about homeschooling in general and had no clue that I homeschool my own kids. On this particular morning, this would be the best word to describe my children. See, when I woke, they were not in the trailer. Apparently, they had become very comfortable with the relative safety and freedom at West Haven, and decided to go on an early morning exploration of the tiny creek that runs through the campground. At first sight, covered in mud, barefoot, and in their nightgowns, I knew there was trouble. Nothing good ever comes from unapproved frolicking through the mud in the morning. Kaeli had found some creatures and a woman and her young child were staying back, but admiring her find. Riley was crouched over, looking in the mud some 50 yards away. I found out the Riley had lost one of her crocs in the mud. True to their feral nature, both girls simply abandoned their shoes (the remaining three were on up on the grass) to continue play. I suppose I should give them credit for attempting to dig through the mud looking for it, but by the time I came out, they had moved on to greater adventures. As an adult, I just can’t wrap my mind around the idea of just moving on to play if I’ve lost my shoe. I would keep looking, mark where I lost it, and definitely ask for help. The kids knew the approximate location where the shoe had gone missing, so I started digging - with my hands. I don’t know if it was frustration that made me make such a rash decision when we have sand shovels in their beach toy bag, but once I had started, I just kept going. Pretty soon, I had combed through all the mud within the 6 x 3 area, going down about 6-12 inches, scoop by muddy scoop. By the time I had finished this lovely task (and still had not retrieved the shoe), I realized that I was just as messy as the girls. We all went back to the RV where everyone spent a good deal of time getting clean and we reviewed several basic rules. You know, like don’t leave the RV without notifying/getting permission from an adult. And the all important, if you lose something, immediately get an adult versus continuing to play. When John arrived home later that day, he borrowed a real shovel from the campground. It did not prove to be any more helpful, although he did not get nearly as messy using the shovel. He remarked that the mud was like quicksand, bubbling up, and sucking all the air desperately with each scoop. The shoe was never recovered.
While I’m happy to report that the girls followed the rules from this point forward, the rain did not let up. It rained for the first three days that we were in Lake George, and then continued to rain several days the following week. There was an awful lot of mud. I’m not a big fan of mud.
We read and got some schoolwork done. In between rains, we tried out the bike path. The first day, I was too worried to leave Ginny alone while we went for a walk. While I knew she couldn’t do any damage in her crate, she cried very loudly so that we could hear her out on the bike trail. She has a lot of separation anxiety since she’s been with us so much since she arrived. At this point, she had only experienced being left by some of her pack. She tolerated John leaving for grocery store pick ups, but waited by the door impatiently for his return. If I left (with or without the kids), Ginny acted like John told her I was never coming back, whimpering, crying, howling, and sometimes throwing herself against the window in her distress. Since this incident (and learning that things like a dog barking are definitely acceptable at this campground), we’ve been working on separating from her for short periods of time to work on this.
It took us about five days before we reached our groove here. We found a beautiful lake where we felt comfortable distancing about 25 minutes away and we discovered the most beautiful views of Lake George after a crazy hike. I’ll discuss those perks in another post. The area is touristy and much is closed. What is not closed is a little too crowded for us. After enjoying the beach at Presque Isle and the spectacular parkland at Lyman Run and Asbury Woods for free, it was a bit of an adjustment to have to pay to enter the NY State Parks.
The bike path was pretty cool and the girls enjoyed both scooter rides and roller skating on the very flat path. We did not have the forethought to realize people would be constantly walking past the backside of our trailer to access the bike path. Some serious cyclists traverse this path and sometimes it’s hard to hear them coming. There was one time when the girls were roller skating ahead of John and I. We called out to let them know that a bicycle was coming; the scene that ensued was like one out of a slow motion comedy routine. They froze, then skated to the opposite side of the road then they each had started from, zigzagging across the path, causing the poor cyclist to have to smash on his brakes to avoid hitting them. There is a stream that runs along the side of the path, darting from side to side and under the path. The path is also lined with a deep forest on one side and some beautiful stone hills. Unfortunately, some of these stones had been vandalized by spray paint; however, the spray paint did little to diminish the overall beauty. We never made it very far on the path — most of the time, we picked the path deeper into the forest on days when it was rainy. It would start to rain and we were sheltered from some of the rain as we raced back to our RV. One time, we took the path 20 minutes in the other direction which came out of the woods and followed the road. We ended up at an amusement park that has been closed down due to covid, capturing some Pokémon and playing Wizards Unite (how did we not know this game existed?!) while a worker from the RV park across the street stood, staring at us. I can only imagine what we looked at as we moved our phones this way and that. This path is definitely a must for the cycling enthusiast or for a gentle stroll.
The wifi was not good from the beginning. John immediately talked to the manager who said that something had been damaged, but would be repaired soon. In the meantime, John set up an extender with the equipment he had. This gave us decent wifi for a few days, but as soon as more guests arrived, our wifi signal was non-existent. This mostly impacted John’s work, so he had to walk up to the office to get a better signal. The only positive is that there was some shade in the grass so he didn’t burn his knees again (like in Coudersport). This also means that I still have not seen Hamilton (I know, cue the tiny violins) despite having Disney Plus.
The other “issue” that we ran into at the campground was electric. Not like an electrifying problem; the electric box was malfunctioning. We noticed that we kept blowing fuses when we had the air conditioning and another appliance on (i.e. microwave, instant pot, tv). This typically only happens when we are not getting enough juice (like when we were plugged into our electric back at the house). One night, the electricity kept flipping off. It couldn’t even seem to stay on for just the a/c. And it was hot. I don’t really do well with hot. John kept going out in the dark, resetting the box, resetting the internal fuses, until he finally realized that our surge protector had been flipped — we were getting way too much electricity. I’m so glad we splurged on all these gadgets before leaving home; this could have been disastrous. RVs run on two different amps, 30 and 50. Despite our size, we only run on 30 amps (this always surprises campground managers as they try to place us on 50 amp sites). The campground manager had no idea what to do except offer to switch us to another site. We didn’t have our truck at that point, so they offered to move us. Just what I want to do at 9:30 at night - pack up EVERYTHING, deal with leveling and outside connections in the dark (that’s a sure-fire way to make sure your sewage line gets gross stuff on you), then unpack inside just so we could then crank on the a/c and hope it would cool down before I attempted to go to sleep. They finally came up with a solution — we plugged in our 50 amp to 30 amp adaptor and powered ourselves that way through the end of the stay.
I knew the holiday was going to be a challenge. Fourth of July weekend was an absolute nightmare for me. By Friday, the campground was overrun. Whippoorwill clearly rented out common spaces that were not typically used for camping, so people were pitching tents all over the grass near the office. The campground clearly did not adhere to any sort of maximum number of guests either. We were surprised to see that the swimming pool was open when we arrived, but know that there are some pools open in limited capacity back in MoCo, so we didn’t view this as a red flag. I don’t even know how many people were at the pool across the weekend.
Then, the Russians arrived. They pulled into the spot across the road from us with a rig that was very similar in size to ours. This had been our wifi booster station, so we moved our box closer to the outlet. They started unloading and it was like a circus where things kept appearing and I couldn’t fathom where they had come from or where they were stored. Like a clown car, I saw innumerable people coming outside from the trailer. There were easily a dozen nice camping chairs set up in addition to two picnic tables and a huge tent. They were always cooking something over the fire and had one of those pots that hangs over the fire like a witch’s cauldron. There were children and dogs all with different faces that appeared to be congregating there at different times. I honestly don’t know how many dogs there were; I tried, but couldn’t keep count. We eventually surmised that several groups of RVs were all convening here. Even though the edge of our properties were still separated by at least 15 feet of road, it was unsettling watching people milling about like ants at a picnic. I actually started to close the curtain on the sliding glass door to shield my eyes from the screen; out of sight, out of mind. When they finally packed up on Monday morning, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then, John reluctantly told me that they had changed sites and moved next door! This didn’t make a ton of sense to me, moving such a big rig, when the other site was still empty. When the little girl camping there ended up playing with my girls (despite us having to monitor and give reminders, they did an amazing job wearing masks and distancing while playing with this little girl who could not speak any English), we learned that the big group had loaned their RV to one family for the week, but would be returning the following week to retrieve their RV.
My favorite story from our time at Whippoorwill has to do with Gunner and the Russians. Gunner is the camp dog at Whippoorwill. He is some sort of hound mix, very tall. While not at all shy, he mostly randomly walks around the campground inspecting everything and peeing on trees every five seconds. He greeted Ginny on our first day, but she was a little too full of puppy enthusiasm, so he refused to acknowledge her on his subsequent visits across our campsite. There were several times when we found “presents” in our yard; given how we pick up after our dog each time she goes, we were pretty sure they were left behind by Gunner. One day, while John was working, sitting on the front lawn to get good wifi reception, Gunner grabbed a very small stick and brought it to him. John said he enjoyed playing fetch with Gunner for awhile, although the size of the stick was pretty amusing. The day the Russians arrived, he meandered through their yard. They looked a little shocked, as we had our first meeting with Gunner, to see a dog roaming off leash through the campground. While we were all watching, Gunner walked around the side of their RV under their tent and lifted his leg on the side of their cooler! They shooed him away, sprayed off the cooler with their hose, and I almost died laughing.
On July 2nd, Alternate Randy decided to have some friends visit and they stayed up (read: they were super noisy) until 2 am; apparently, there are no real quiet hours at Whippoorwill. Given how great our sleep was and the confinement to only our campsite while on the campground with all the extra guests, we spent most of the weekend out.
We briefly drove up Prospect Mountain. The summit was closed; although many people were walking around the closed sign to make the ascent, we felt that there wasn’t enough room to safely distance to the top. The views from where we were paled in comparison to the views from Shelving Rock Mountain. Again, the summit may have been much more majestic.
We also made one of our very best purchases over the holiday weekend, spurred by an inability to find a socially distanced activity. We drove to Lake Moreau. Not only was the beach too crowded for our taste (there are strict limitations to how close people can get at the beach, but there are no limitations to how close people will be when they walk past you, etc.) and the picnic areas were a mess, as well. Even the hiking trails didn’t feel comfortable for us. So, we bought an inflatable boat. It’s amazing, being able to escape onto the water where you can easily keep distance and bathe in that glorious Vitamin D.
We only actually visited Lake George once during our stay. We parked at a local beach where we only had to pay a meter for the three hours of our stay, snuck the dog past the “no dogs allowed” sign and plopped her on our boat, heading into the lake. There is no doubt that this lake is exquisite. There is a charming old fashioned steam boat that plays music as it passes.
People were enjoying the water from motorboats, water skis, parachuting, and in all sorts of floats.
Despite our great experience there, we opted for Lake Moreau due to the difficulty rowing our little boat on Lake George; the waves from the motor boats caused us to really struggle to stay in one spot.
We are definitely learning. People sometimes misrepresent their product in order to make a sale; the campground can really impact your overall feel for a town. The best lesson we learned from our time in Lake George is that we can always find glimmers of the right kind of adventure — even if we have to forge our own path.