Upstate New York’s Adirondack Park shelters six million acres of forested mountains, tranquil lakes, and isolated wilderness ripe for exploring. Strap a kayak or canoe to your car, lace up your hiking boots, and head out for adventure.

Day One: Lake Placid to Essex and back (100 miles)

The six-million-acre Adirondack Park was created in 1892 in response to the public’s fear that American men were growing soft. What was needed, it was decided, were places where men—and even women—could build and flex their muscles, fish and tramp and hunt, and regain the stamina and courage of their forebears. Whether the park succeeded in restoring masculine vigor is uncertain; what is sure is that these serene, forested lands studded with nearly 3,000 lakes and ponds have, over the years, restored equilibrium to the enervated.

As a base camp for threading through the Adirondacks, you can’t go wrong with either the pricey, immensely comfortable, private, and centrally located Lake Placid Lodge or the less expensive but equally welcoming Mirror Lake Inn. Set on the water at the very edge of Mirror Lake, this inn and spa is less rustic, more clubby and traditional, and showers guests with attentive service. (Note: At dinner, seconds are on the house.)

Set out east on Route 73 from Lake Placid (despite its name, there’s really nothing placid about it). Traffic on the main street cum shopping mall can be bumper to bumper, and foreign flags from the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympic Games, which the village hosted, still flap on every lamppost.

At Keene, follow Route 9N to U.S. 9. The latter was the only road through the central Adirondacks until New Yorkers voted to turn 300 protected acres over to a new four-lane highway (I-87) in 1959, thereby channeling the tourist traffic away. When the interstate was completed, development along once-bustling U.S. 9 slowed to a virtual standstill. A string of charming neon-drizzled hotels, built when Ozzie and Harriett were on TV and Ike was in the White House, still line the road on perfectly manicured lawns, with 1960s-vintage patio chairs and retro plastic umbrellas set up around their swimming pools, as if frozen in time. One such establishment, the Blue Spruce in Keeseville, is so perfectly preserved that the only thing missing are tail fins in the parking lot.

Tubes of red and blue light swirl along its eaves, and the seven-foot, Christmas tree–shaped sign has beckoned tourists with the promise of color TV for 50 years.

Turn off U.S. 9 onto Route 22 and stop to raft through the soaring, river-cut cliffs at Ausable Chasm. The privately owned chasm was one of the first tourist attractions in the country, and travelers have been cruising down its gentle waters since the mid-1800s. The trip is no less enjoyable today, and a lot more comfortable without the bustles, grand hats, and other formal wear sported by the visitors who flocked here in the nineteenth century. The permanent exhibition on the history of the chasm is also well worth a look.

Back on Route 22, a two-lane bordered by dense forest and stone walls, you approach the village of Essex, and deep blue, whitecap-whipped Lake Champlain comes into view, with the Green Mountains of Vermont rising on its far shore. The town looks just as it must have 125 years ago, with a peerless collection of pre–Civil War homes that have earned it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. Although few of these houses are open to the public, Greystone, a handsome, 1853 Greek Revival mansion built of cut limestone, welcomes visitors while restoration work is being completed. The estate, which sits at the edge of the lake on manicured grounds, is chockablock with massive mahogany bookcases, Empire furnishings, antique textiles, and porcelain, and its owners are gracious and informative guides. Be sure not to miss the exquisite antique Adirondack guide boat on display inside the house.

Day Two: Lake Placid to Raquette Lake and back (165 miles)

Head out of town on Route 3 and pick up Route 30 south. Now, you’re deep in the Adirondacks, where the white pines, red spruce, and yellow birch grow in thick stands and the mountains loom high enough to block out the morning sun. Here, the only sign of man is the occasional cluster of tourist cabins and the RVs chugging slowly along the road. The hamlet of Long Lake is the picture of Adirondack tranquillity, surrounded by mountain walls, with kayakers paddling through the light chop on the lake, floatplanes rocking gently at the pier, and the rickety Adirondack Hotel presiding over all, as it has for 100 years. If you have time, rent a canoe or kayak and put in here for a peaceful paddle around the banks.

Life for the natives wasn’t always as postcard perfect as it appears today, and the superb displays at the Adirondack Museum, seven miles south in Blue Mountain Lake, paint a vivid picture of the hardships and unforgiving elements suffered by the loggers and early settlers here. Loss of limb from accidents was common, and many a young logger was shipped back to his family in a box made of the same pine he had come to clear. There are more than 100,000 artifacts on display in the museum, many of which examine the environmental and health concerns of the time. One exhibit explains in great detail the debilitating (though rarely fatal) spruce fever, the primary symptoms of which were an insatiable thirst for booze and the comforts of the whores in nearby Utica. The late-nineteenth-century clergy considered it a serious enough malady to order Good Books by the thousands, and even send in intrepid “wood missionaries” to set the dissipated loggers back on the path of righteousness.

From here, turn west on Route 28 to get to Raquette Lake and Sagamore, the Great Camp built in 1895 by William West Durant for $250,000 and sold to the Vanderbilts a couple of years later for $165,000. Its grand rustic design set a precedent for what would become the classic Adirondack style of many summer retreats built here for the monied classes. The Adirondack life portrayed at Sagamore, now a resort and museum, could not be more different from that of the loggers. Industrialists such as the Vanderbilts and J. P. Morgan employed small armies of servants to tend to their needs while they escaped the heat and grime of New York City for a month or two each summer and, according to popular thought, got closer to God. Not one to sacrifice urban conveniences, Vanderbilt installed a power plant on the property and a sewer system that’s still in use today.

The Great Camps were designed to bring the majesty of God’s Great Outdoors indoors through the liberal use of knotty spruce paneling, bentwood furniture, and ornamental twig work—all finely crafted and abundantly displayed here—as well as the mounting of as many deer, moose, and bison heads as a wall could hold. City slickers loved this egregious interpretation of nature, but the locals found it absurd and resented the ostentation. Tours of Sagamore are given by actors who assume the role of servants who worked at this Great Camp, offering insights into the tensions between the locals and wealthy seasonal visitors from New York City that endure even today.

Lake Placid to Port Henry (130 miles)

Drive east on Route 73 and stop to hike the forested slopes around a mountain lake just past Keene, where the only sound is the wind through the trees and the occasional trout splashing. Then, heading north on I-87, stop for lunch at McQueen’s Food & Fountain in Westport, a little village set on a green where Norman Rockwell would feel right at home. Driving along the foothills of the Adirondacks, you enter a landscape of orchards and wheat fields marked with weather-beaten barns. The stretch of Route 9N between Westport and Port Henry is a series of gentle crests and dips hugging Lake Champlain, with hand-painted wooden shingles advertising fruit and worms (a dollar a dozen) for sale.

Nineteenth-century wisdom held that the Adirondack air could cure everything from tuberculosis to effeminacy. After a weekend of driving through the park’s pristine forests, the idea that this place has the power to cure whatever ails you seems awfully enlightened.

Pit Stops

Keeseville

Blue Spruce (518-834-7155; doubles, $50).

Lake Placid

Lake Placid Lodge (518-523-2700; lakeplacidlodge.com; doubles, $325–$400).

Mirror Lake Inn, Resort and Spa (518-523-2544; mirrorlakeinn.com; doubles, $110–$310; treatments,$45–$140).

Upper Saranac Lake The Wawbeek (800-953-2656; wawbeek.com; doubles, $125–$250; entrées, $17–$24).

Westport

McQueen’s Food & Fountain (518-962-8988; entrées, $8–$14).