Rainy Day Trip to the Adirondack Experience Museum

Posted in General, Things to Do

It was a cold and rainy day today, but we were determined to make the most of our Labor Day weekend so we headed off to the Adirondack Experience (formerly the Adirondack Museum) in Blue Mountain Lake.  This is one of our favorite rainy-day Adirondack activities, and it never disappoints.  I love this museum.  It seems to capture what makes the Adirondacks special to each of us, whether it be Adirondack handicrafts, Adirondack wildlife and the park’s natural beauty, the intrigue of the Great Camps and old-fashioned modes of transportation or the gorgeous wooden boats.

The museum is set up as a campus, so a warm sweater and a raincoat are a must-have on a day like today.  There are a series of exhibit buildings with paths and walkways meandering between them.  Along the paths there are smaller outdoor exhibits, which are often small but beautiful examples of Adirondack-style architecture.  One of the buildings contains a small café, which was very busy today, and has a stunning view of Blue Mountain Lake.

This time, we went primarily for my two-year-old to go and see the trains.  They have an old steam engine and carriage stationed in a covered exhibit outside, and a very fancy private car in an exhibit inside.  We had a lot of fun climbing into the steam engine, ringing the bell and pulling the levers.

We also found some great interactive exhibits where we learned about mining and logging in the Adirondacks.  Kids and parents alike could pretend to detonate explosives and blast through rock, or use poles to free-up log jams in the river projected on an interactive screen on the floor.