Things to do / Travel Guide
- Saratoga Springs' Caffe Lena, opened in 1960, has hosted early performances of such renowned songwriters as Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Ani DiFranco, and others.
- The town of Port Henry is known as the “Home of the Champ” - the Champ being a legendary monster purportedly living in the deep waters of Lake Champlain. Hundreds of sightings have been reported, dating back to the 1600s. Every August, Port Henry, New York celebrates “Champ Day” with music, food, and crafts.
- In 1876, Dr. Livingston Trudeau, suffering from tuberculosis, came to Saranac Lake to quietly die, but instead the fresh mountain air restored him. He subsequently opened the first outdoor sanatorium for the treatment of tuberculosis in 1884. In 1887, the author Robert Louis Stevenson, following his successful publication of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” came to Saranac Lake to be close to Dr. Trudeau, hoping to recover from his own tuberculosis. Many others followed, with the popular belief in the 1890s being that by simply breathing in air around Saranac Lake you'd be cured.
- Thousand Island dressing originated in the Thousand Islands area, when a fishing guide named George LaLonde began offering a new dressing with his shore dinners - a blend of mayonnaise, chili sauce, chopped eggs, relish, parsley, and pickles (with slight variations in ingredients). Sophia LaLonde, George LaLonde's wife, has been credited with actually inventing the condiment. The dressing went public at a hotel now called the 1000 Islands Inn, where bottles of the “original recipe” are still sold.
- “The Price is Right Island” in the Thousand Islands area was given away to a contestant on the television game show of the same name in 1964.
- Longue Vue Island is the only artificial island in the Thousand Islands area, made by a doting husband for his wife when he wasn't able to find an island that suited her.
- A similarly adoring husband, George Boldt (who owned the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel) purchased Hart Island in 1895.
He legally changed the island's name to Heart Island and had its landscape reshaped to resemble a heart.
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