At Bistro LeRoux, a little French-American restaurant with seasonal dishes, you might be excused for believing you were 150 miles north in French-speaking Canada even if you are in downtown New York (the braised short ribs and truffle fries are especially delicious after a long day on the trails). You can also trot over to The Hitching Post, the super mario bros café and cheesemaking facility at Nettle Meadow Farm, for a taster plate of their award-winning artisanal cheese. A half-mile stretch of the main street in Lake George village has three distilleries: High Peaks Distilling, Lake George Distilling Company, and Adirondack Winery.

There are plenty of places to stay in Lake George, but you'd be surprised at how fast they fill up in the summer. There are lakefront resorts, hotels, inns, yurts, and camping and glamping sites (check out Hipcamp, Tentrr, and ReserveAmerica.com to camp on one of Lake George's islands).

The magnificent Sagamore Resort was built in the early 1880s (i.e. the dawn of tourism in Lake George). The hotel, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, offers a luxurious spa and lakeside dining. Because of its location at the south entrance of the Adirondack Park and wide range of lodgings, Stone Gate Resort is a well-liked choice (hotel rooms, family-friendly suites, private cabins).

Don't be deceived by Tupper Lake's little size and charming rusticity. The Wild Center, a 115-acre outdoor natural history museum with the only treetops walk in the Adirondacks, and the Adirondack Sky Center & Observatory, a stargazing center providing public observation activities where you may just spot the Milky Way, are both nearby.

Raquette River Brewing is a significant crowd-pleaser with live music, a dog-friendly policy, and a food truck "alley" offering tacos and wood-fired pizzas. The company's signature mango wheat ale, which is produced with mango puree, and the maple cream porter (which may perhaps replace dessert? ), which is created with local milk sugar and maple syrup, are both small-batch beers. Visit Washboard Donut Shop and Laundromat for a cup of coffee and a crunchy handcrafted doughnut, if nothing else for the novelty of it.

Motor lodges are now popular. The once-retro Shaheen's Adirondack Inn now provides an updated take on conventional roadside lodgings as a result of renovations carried out under the ownership of its new company, the Weekender hotel group. Despite the facelift, the motel's main selling point is its accessibility to outdoor activities like hiking, canoeing, and snowmobiling in the winter. There is also direct access to a snowmobile track.