Going Back, Sidenote: Raquette Lake

This is just a little side trip in my now somewhat-delayed “Going Back” series. While until this year, we hadn’t gone back to Syracuse in quite some time, ever since moving to Pennsylvania we have gone back to our old haunts in the Adirondacks nearly every year, and this year’s trip included something special.

Early in our marriage, flooded with all the time that drinking had previously taken up, we needed to find new things to do, and turned to nature. While Lee was initially skeptical, we had a magical camping trip at Keeywaydin in the Thousand Islands, where we fell in love (as we are wont to do) under the starriest skies we’d ever seen.

From that point on we started exploring just about every campground, hiking spot, and waterfall anywhere within reach of Syracuse. Having long wanted a canoe – a boat of my own had been what seemed an unattainable dream since high school – I traded my old dorm mini-fridge for a severely damaged (and badly patched) Old Town tandem canoe that we appropriately called The Brick. Despite its weight and lack of grace in the water, we fell in love with paddling, and soon made the financially inadvisable decision to buy a long, elegant stable Sawyer, the X-17 wilderness tripper, which we found at an odd little boat seller in Mexico, NY. (Inadvisable: I was entering grad school, income was very tight, and that boat cost $900 plus tax – about $2500 in today’s money. But we still have that boat 37 years later.)

We strapped that big beast to the roof of our Renault Fuego (utterly ridiculous looking) and traveled all over in search of beautiful places to paddle. The central Adirondacks, only two hours and change away from Syracuse, quickly became one of our favorite haunts, and Raquette Lake one of our favorite places to stay.

Tioga Point on Raquette Lake was the site of the second hotel called Raquette Lake House, from 1879 to 1890; it was then called Kenwell’s Landing. Nessmuk stayed there in 1880 on one of his journeys. It was sold as a private camp, and then sold again in 1906 to a Dr. Evans who constructed several cottages around the camp. From 1951 to 1967, the State Conservation Department ran the Raquette Lake Boys Camp there, and then the buildings were removed and the point made into a camping area intended for use by those taking the Fulton Chain canoe route.

There have long been a number of lean-tos on the site, including a group of them around a major fireplace and chimney that was part of one of the original camp buildings. The site can only be reached by boat, and is a good 50-minute paddle from Raquette Lake Village in quiet waters. We loved loading up the boat with our weekend’s supplies and heading out across the lake into the unknown – Raquette is nothing if not a moody lake, and many were the times we had to take a longer tack to get to land because of the wind and the waves. Once there, we could huddle in our lean-to, hike along a trail to the east, or just paddle endlessly. We stayed there at least four times, probably more, though we also stayed at the lake’s Golden Beach campground quite a few times.

We hadn’t been there since 1992, and Lee didn’t make the last trip to the point – she was pregnant and suffering morning sickness at that point. Her sister and I had uncharacteristically gone up a day early together, paddled across and set up the lean-to together, but the weather was miserable, the wind rough, and when it was time to paddle back across the lake and meet Lee, we decided to just pack up our gear and figure out a plan B. We had a rough, exhausting paddle back to the village with a laden boat.

Lee arrived but wished she hadn’t made the trip, as she wasn’t feeling well at all – and still has a vivid memory of the Speculator firehouse bathroom she had to throw up in on the way north. This was before cell phones – with us out in the wilderness, she would have had no way to get a message to us that she wasn’t going to come, so she drove up anyway. We made a Plan B involving finding a motel in Old Forge, and Lee and her sister went off in our little Subaru, while I followed with the canoe and camping gear in our Ford Ranger.

As I turned onto the main road, a control arm on my three-year-old truck gave out, and I was broken down on the side of the road. A truck carrying a canoe parked on the side of the road is no unusual sight in the Adirondacks, so I was fortunate that Lee realized I was nowhere behind her and doubled back to check on me. They drove into Inlet, where there was still a garage at the time. I got a tow into town, we crammed what we needed into the Subaru GL, and ended up spending the night at the Forge Motel for the first time ever. Signs warned us not to bring snowmobile oil into the rooms, so you know it was a classy joint. I think we just hung out around town, and went back home the next day; a week later I had my mother drive me up there to pick up the truck because Lee wasn’t in shape for driving.

In the years with children, Raquette Lake was a little remote and a trip like Tioga Point – at least an hour each way in two boats with small children in unpredictable water – out of the question for camping. We stuck more to Old Forge and Inlet in those days. In recent summers, we rented a cabin on Third Lake, and really enjoyed that location – a decently long paddle all the way into Old Forge in one direction or Inlet in the other, but also possible to just enjoy the immediate area, and a short drive to the Moose River for one of our favorite paddles anywhere.

Last year, we found a new cabin on Raquette Lake and were excited to be able to stay on our favorite lake for the first time in decades. On that trip, we did a long 16 km paddle into one of the bays and up the Marion River, one of our favorites from decades ago, a cozy little twisting wetland journey.

This year (almost two months ago, now, but what is time?) we finally made that 50-minute or so paddle back to Tioga Point. Our vacation this year was a gift, with the most perfect stretch of weather we’ve ever encountered in the Adirondacks, day after day of sun and temperatures in the ’70s; we didn’t even have a breeze to contend with until the next to last day. So the trip up the lake was idyllic and unhurried, so much so that we decided to paddle beyond Tioga up to a creek outlet in Boulder Bay, where we took as many stable fly bites as we could handle and then made back for the point. It was late enough in the season that it was completely empty, and we were delighted to find it largely unchanged. All the lean-tos are still there; the old central fireplace, once part of the boys camp, is still there. To our surprise, there appears to now be a full-time caretaker, and every site has a bear box, something that wasn’t thought of in our day. (This is true all over – municipal parks now have bear-resistant trash containers, for example.)

We were able to sit there and have a very pleasant lunch at the very lean-to where we nearly always stayed, No. 3, and think back to those days of just being there, together, with nothing to do the whole day but paddle, cook, relax, and sleep. So young, so in love, so happy together. And there we were, 33 years later, not so young anymore but still in love, still happy together.

Times have changed a bit – we did arrive in separate boats. Our big 17′ Sawyer canoe hasn’t seen water in a few years, but we keep it just in case someday a tandem becomes more practical again. But for now, Lee loves paddling her own kayak, a Hurricane Sojourn. I took our smaller, solo Sawyer, as the open boat was just more practical that day in the event anything went awry, and it’s much, much easier for me to get in and out of. In fact, it really has me thinking whether my next boat – because I do need to replace my kayak – might be another canoe. But one with a comfy seat, because that is now apparently a thing!

It’s been a really tough week, and hard to think of anything positive that will come in the coming years, so I was happy to think back on this special place.