Much of upstate New York belongs to the Adirondacks, with old mountains, lakes, forests, wildlife and scenery. Two of the more famous tourist spots are the High Falls Gorge (above) and the Ausable Chasm (below), both on the Ausable River—from the French ‘au sable’ meaning ‘sandy’—which is fed from Lake Placid and flows down to Lake Champlain. Since they’re well developed old trails, walking along the secure walkways and overlooks costs about $20 each, but I think they’re still worth it, though neither is quite the scale I imagined for the ‘Grand Canyon of the East’.

Lake Champlain is part of the water route from New York City to Quebec, so several key battles were fought in the area, including at Saratoga and during the War of 1812. The British were winning in 1814, having sacked DC, but Thomas Macdonough won the Battle of Lake Champlain aboard his ship, the USS Saratoga, thwarting a British invasion down the Hudson in 1814.

This National Heritage Area preserves both history and beautiful nature, including Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller in Vermont. The Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere is also recognized by UNESCO for its forests, wetlands and mountains in both upstate NY and about 1/2 of Vermont. Unfortunately, the Trump administration ended the only other UNESCO Biosphere in the North Atlantic Region at New Hampshire’s Hubbard Brook hardwood forest research. Still, there are many other fascinating places to visit in this diverse heritage area, such as the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton New York on the St Lawrence River, as well as the scenic homelands of the Algonquin and Iroquois people near the Canadian border.