All Roads Lead to the...Adirondacks?

We all know about I-87, the famous Northway which often clogs on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons year round as hoards of people from NYC and North Jersey head up to Northern New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire. It's where I learned how to drive on a highway. It is also the fastest way to get from the Catskills to the Adirondacks. But is it the most scenic?

There are two direct routes you can take from Hamilton to get into the Adirondacks: Route 8 and Route 28. This past weekend we drove up to the Adirondack Museum on Route 28 and took Route 8 back from the Wildlife Refuge. They each have their own personality: I take the southern piece of Route 8 when I drive to Hamilton from home. It goes by both the Unadilla Sports Center, well known for dirt bike racing, and the Chobani factory, which gets bigger every time I drive by. Route 8 continues on through Utica and becomes the mix of trees and houses that travels through the Adirondacks until it becomes 9N just short of Ticonderoga. It always strikes me that most of the houses along route 8, both decrepit and maintained, are built right off the road, probably to keep plowing costs low. The dirt driveways to the others are usually marked by rocks with numbers painted on them. They all look the same; nobody has the desire or the money to built a McMansion or some other gaudy creation. Where there are no houses trees grow on.

Route 28 is also interesting in its own way. The Northern terminus is in Warrensburg, a town just off of I-87. 28 makes a big loop around the Adirondacks, passing through Indian Lake and Old Forge. It's what the ambulance in Old Forge takes to get the nearest hospital, which is the one that we use in Utica. It has a slightly different character from Route 8 since in addition to the houses there are also propane stations, antique stores, and billboards (quite a few of which market ethanol free gas). But the most interesting thing to me about 28 is that, after going through Utica, it makes a wide sweep down through the middle of New York to the Catskills, passing right by Belleayre and Ashokan before reaching its Southern Terminus in Kingston. I've driven that piece countless times going to ski camps at Belleayre and, in a strange C shaped arch, the same road has connected the Catskills to the Adirondacks since 1930, around 40 years before I-87 was completed (dates from Wikipedia).

P.S. I also encourage people to put their pictures from the trip on Google Drive so that we can download them!