Kim Andresen

2015 Top 3 Blogs in Review

We scoured our blogs for the most popular, most informative, and just downright oddest pieces from the past year. In case you missed them on the first go-round, here are our top three picks from the Saranac Lake Region.

3.
A Century of Ice Palaces

Saranac Lake has a long history of building amazing structures from ice as a centerpiece of their Winter Carnival festivities. Throughout the cycles of our village's famous winter festival, the Ice Palace has been both a focal point and a marker of what our Winter Break signifies in our history. For a short time tradition even had villagers "storming the fortress," which meant running up the hill with Roman candles and people in the fort shooting fireworks back at the "invaders." Did you know...

2. Bigfoot

Does Bigfoot live in the Adirondacks? Or is he just here for a vacation? While discussions about Bigfoot can seem rather recent in our United States history, Native Americans have talked about Sasquatch for hundreds of years. Sightings have appeared all over the Adirondacks, from Saranac Lake in the north to a famous sighting in Whitehall, in the southern foothills. If this is indeed a myth, it is a remarkably durable one. Do you believe?

This image, from 1976, is of the "Whitehall Bigfoot" and is one of the best documented of all Bigfoot sightings

And, the Saranac Lake Region #1 blog for 2015 is...

1. Riding the Rails

We have rail bikes. The first ones in America. When I first heard of them, my mental image was of rail cars, those hand-pumped, flat-floored vehicles the Three Stooges would use to get away at the end of one of their comedy shorts. But rail bikes are more like recumbent bikes which ride on the railroad tracks. They are foot-powered. Are you picturing the Flintstones now? Full speed ahead to learn more!