The Adirondack Mountains in northern upstate New York are beautiful and rugged, and pretty remote for day-tripping New Englanders.

The southern part of the range is closer to civilization, so it tends to be more built up with t-shirt shops, water slides, and miniature golf attractions, and the scenery is more the familiar Eastern Deciduous Forest. Disappointingly, long Route 28 is essentially a corridor through the trees, with lakes just a hundred yards away and completel yinvisible from the road. Once you get beyond Old Forge (on the west) and Lake George (on the east) you start to get into more interesting country.

North of Blue Mountain Lake along Rte 30 (from the west) or beyond Lake Placid from the east) you get into the firs-and-birches northwoods look and the roads come closer to the lakes, offering grand vistas.

By the time you get to Long Lake, Tupper Lake, and Saranac Lake, you are definitely in different and wildly scenic country.

We've been through and around the Adirondacks a number of times. Our best recommendation for sightseers from New England: use Burlington, VT or Rutland VT as a point of entry and explore north of Lake George and Blue Mountain Lake. Below those areas you can cover a lot of ground and not see much that's worth the trip.