Skip to main content

The Great Sacandaga Lake

Although traveling around the world, seeing new faces and places, and learning about history is exciting, I believe it's important to alway return to "the nest". Where I grew up, there is also a lot of American, and family, history. One perfect example is my family's house set on the majestic, Great Sacandaga Lake.

The "lake" is actually a reservoir. This part of the Adirondack region of Upstate NY was flooded after the construction of a damn in Conklingville, NY in 1924. The damn was completed in 1930. The reservoir feeds into the Hudson River and is managed by the Hudson River-Black River Regulating District. Interestingly enough, the money used to maintain the damn, reservoir, and surrounding land (which is owned by New York State) mostly comes from the electrical companies that run hydro-electric turbines at the damn.

The damn was completed, and the land inside of the reservoir was flooded in 1930. Many families from the surrounding towns and cities in the Upstate, Adirondack region (and as far as New York City) came to build "camps". These small summer houses were mostly only suitable to live in during the summer season. My family was one of these early immigrants to nature's newest sanctuary in 1934, building a small camp on the south-western border of the lake. Since then, my great grandparents, grandparents, parents, brothers (...you get the point...) have been spending their summers up at this lake, soaking up the sun and peacefulness of a complete escape from "reality". Driving down the country roads to our tiny slice of Heaven, I can't help but feel at ease, like everything I worried about is sapped out of me. It remains my favorite place on Earth.

Cheers, M@

PS: Check out this album and this album on my Picasa site for more pictures.


Sources: Great Sacandaga Lake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sacandaga_Lake (viewed on 17-Oct-08).
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Calf Pasture Beach City Park in Norwalk, CT

I knew that Connecticut had some nice beaches prior to moving here; I even enjoyed Sherwood Island State Park during my Audit Staff years. I didn't know that there's a great beach and park less than 5 miles away! (Coincidentally, there's another one just 2 miles from my place, too, which we discovered while looking up directions to Calf Pasture!). Calf Pasture Beach and City Park is maintained by the City of Norwalk and is situated on the Long Island Sound in East Norwalk. It's a decent sized beach terminating in a public pier. On a gorgeous day like today you can see sail boats out on the Sound and the arching Connecticut coast line stretching east towards Westport (yes I know that sounds funny). The coolest part is that there's a fish fry grill in the park which serves your typical American summer delicacies and behind that there's a miniature golf course! I love mini golf...laugh if you please. Parking at the beach is a steep $20 (thanks for the tip on...
Post a Comment
Read more

Los Angeles Pride Revelations

F lying back from an outstanding weekend in Los Angeles where I spent the weekend visiting friends and celebrating Pride, I'm finding myself full of wonder and a pent-up desire to live in a place where being out, open, and able to live a "normal" life is second nature (doesn't sound too unreasonable, eh?). There are few cities in the world today that actually afford this possibility to its citizens, and even they have certain restrictions due to state or federal laws (in whichever country they're in). L.A., however, has an incredible appeal from its west-coast lifestyle, proximity to Tinsel Town, and its people's history of civil demonstrations for equal rights. The energy there is completely unique. Over the past three-and-a-half days I was overwhelmed with parties; meeting new, attractive guys; and experiencing L.A.'s Pride parade and festival. Thanks to my friends Jayzen Patria, Joe Keenan, and Logan Grizzel, I felt like a VIP (and even had VIP access t...
Post a Comment
Read more

March 9, 2008 :: Bannerman Castle

I've traveled along the Hudson River many a time on an Amtrak train while passing from Albany, NY to New York, NY, however it wasn't until today that by chance I poked my head up out of the magazine I was reading and caught a glimpse of the ruins of a fantastic structure standing out on a small island just off the river's east coast. In awe of this castle-like structure which might as well have been ripped out of a page of a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, I gaped out the window as it speedily passed away, out of site in the setting sun which now barely illuminated the valley. My love of New York State, its vast and important history, and of medieval adventures and stories inspired me to do a little research to find out what this building was, how it came to be, and why now it was largely in a state of mystery and decay. The structure's name is Bannerman Castle named after its architect and creator, Francis Bannerman VI (1851-1918) and is situated on Pollepe...
Post a Comment
Read more