Just in case you were wondering, a video popped up today of a sled traveling in and on Long Lake. Always check our website for the current conditions and ask a local about the lakes.
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Year in Review Long Lake
What do you remember about 2011? Well already a day has gone by and I’m sure I missed something. So maybe you got to spend a lot of time in Long Lake this year, or maybe you kept in touch via updates and twitter and your friends and relatives. Maybe you drove down Route 30/28N and decided to spontaneously stay for the night and found a Barber Shop Quartet singing on the beach or Martin Sexton signing autographs. Long Lake is small, but makes the most of the seasons and even though we’re off the beaten path and not right off the railroad tracks or the Northway, we still have our fingers on the pulse (from a quiet distance)
The video is a timeline with both events in and around Long Lake and Raquette Lake interspersed with some images of notable news figures of the past year. Trivia is so popular an event, one of the upcoming questions may revolve around some of the images in this piece – so watch carefully.
What did we miss? I know you’ll be sure to tell me.
See you in 2012. Enjoy the show. Moonlighter’s Snowmobile Club Winter Carnival is coming up on January 14, 2012.. THINK SNOW!
For breaking news always check our mylonglake.com blog My Long Lake blog and Facebook fan us at Facebook My Long Lake
Spectacular Light Show in Long Lake
The Long Lake Lights are an animated display of Christmas lights set to music and can be found at 46 Stone Lane in Long Lake, NY through New Years Eve January 2012. There are over 14,000 LED lights set to 40 minutes of Christmas music designed, implemented and produced by resident Long Laker and electrician Bill Ellick.
Bill started the show in 2008 because as he says “I wasn’t in debt deep enough and there were so many dark houses in Long Lake at the holidays, I felt I could do something to brighten things up.” He wanted to offer the people of the community something fun celebrating the season and he also admits he likes projects “so I started up with this.”
Long Lake Lights 2011 Photo by Bill Ellick
The lights are controlled by channel boxes purchased from Light-O-Rama in Glens Falls, NY. Each card has 16 channels and are managed through a software program to control the lights and music. To save a few dollars Bill purchases kits to build the controllers used for the show. Bill’s show airs on 87.9 on a legal FM transmitter and when the show isn’t running there is over 40 hours of Christmas music playing.
Bill programs the entire production himself and selects the music for the show. The first song he ever programmed is Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s “Father Christmas” and it still remains one of his favorites. Bill works on each song to follow the music beat by beat. “I have to listen to each song about 400 times.” It takes a minimum of three to six hours to program one minute of music and Bill has 40 minutes of show time. He has also implemented two songs designed by another programmer.
To test the show Bill can control the show remotely through his laptop and wireless router right from his car. As the season progresses he adds new elements having just added candy cane spinners over the weekend. The show is constantly evolving depending on how much time he has and what treasures he unearths in the basement. A bargain hunter, Bill often takes advantage of the end of year Christmas sales to enrich his collection of decorations.
This project is continuous. Next season he hopes to showcase an animated sleigh with reindeer to fly across his house. This year he didn’t put out the choir, or “plastic people” as he calls them. He has plans to create a mountain top with a church, and set the “plastic people” throughout the trees to create a narrative winter scene set to music. At this point he’s looking at an investment of about $8000 for the props so that portion of the project is on standby. He has also considered lighting up trees behind his home to add some more depth to the production.
Bill uses high quality strings of LED lights. There are 120 strings of LED’s illuminating his Christmas tree and each string is about $20 to $25 and “knock on wood, they’ve lasted four years so far.” The electricity bill has been reasonable because the animation of the lights it isn’t drawing as much power as people think. The program and the radio station run off one computer. Everything is timed and all in all, he estimates he uses a total of about five minutes of full power for a 40 minute show.
He doesn’t mind the look of the LED’s either. “LED’s have a deep color, some people don’t care for the pure white of the LED’s and prefer the look of the incandescent glowing yellow colors, but only five percent of my show utilizes incandescent lights.” Bill wishes he had more lights, but he will only use the best quality to avoid the pitfalls of power outages and unpredictable weather. The lights have held their own through torrents of rain, ice and snowstorms.
Bill has been working with electronics all his life and he continues to make this project his focus because at this point “I’ve gotten so carried away and gone overboard with the investment I can’t turn back now.”
At night he keeps the lights off in the front of his house so he can see the cars out front. He gets about 1/2 dozen cars a night, he senses there are more visitors each year.
Bill starts installing the project in October and it runs nightly from 5pm to 10:30pm on weekends and nightly 5-9:30 during the week. Bill will have the show running on New Years Eve and through the first week of January.
Show runs rain, snow or mud!
Tune your FM radio to 87.9 FM to hear the music.
Visitors should not block the main road, keep your radios at a reasonable level, and please turn off your headlights so that everyone can enjoy the show.
Lights are running 6-9:30pm Monday-Friday and 6-10:30pm on Saturday and Sunday nights. Random Lights run from 5pm – 6pm. The lights will be up and running late night on New Years Eve so hop on the LIttle Bus and make a stop at the Long Lake Lights.
For more information about the Long Lake Lights or upcoming events call 518-624-3077.
Long Lake Wins Funds
The Town of Long Lake has announced it has been awarded a matching grant of $18,000 from the Department of State to complete the Nature Trail connecting two business districts in the town of Long Lake. The Nature Trail is designed to increase pedestrian traffic around Jennings Park Pond and to offer a quiet, natural alternative to visitors and residents in the center of town. It’s a great spot to watch birds, including herons, bald eagles and plenty of geese. It is a popular fishing spot stocked with trout in the spring. The Nature Trail is a widening of trail connecting the Long Lake Town Ball Field around the pond leading to the Long Lake Beach Area, Helms Seaplane Base and the Adirondack Hotel.
Projects to improve the nature trail include adding pedestrian viewing, adding safety measures, widening the trails, and to identify the flora and fauna along the route. Long term plans include expanding to the Long Lake Diner, across route 30 along the brook to Hoss’s Country Corner. Eventually the goal is to increase the length up to one mile. Also key areas will be identified at the Long Lake Town Beach to repair retaining walls and to help offset the cost of maintaining the garden area.
90 Miler Launch Day Two Long Lake
The Town of Long Lake is one of the main stops on the 90 Miler Route, the Northern Forest Canoe Trail and the Raquette River Corridor. It’s a paddlers paradise offering amenities for paddlers to stop and rejuvenate before continuing on their journey.
CAP-21, in collaboration with the Town of Webb, will be distributing project funds as part of the 90 Miler Blueway Trail Strategy. The intent of the Blueway Trail initiative is for those communities located along the waterway route of the Adirondack Canoe Classic (known as the 90 Miler) to cooperatively develop a regional strategy for community revitalization, sustainable economic development and enhanced public access to waterways in the corridor between Old Forge and Saranac Lake. These projects follow an extensive process of working with the townships, community groups and paddle-sport based businesses to identify priority waterway linked priorities. The Blueway Trail projects are being funded through the NYS Department of State, Division of Coastal Resources, with funds provided under Title 11 of the Environmental Protection Fund, and is being coordinated through CAP-21.
For more information – see complete article at www.mylonglake.com/blogLong Lake Blog
Long Lake Receives New Photos
Check out the My Long Lake Blog for the latest report about the growing collection of photographs for the Town of Long Lake archives.
New posted post posted
So many of you reading this are subscribers to this longlake blog, but what many of you don’t know, there is another location for all the blogging at mylonglakeblog and eventually this blog of which you have subscribed to won’t be as active. Some of you have noticed and vocalized that it’s been lacking breaking news.
In Long Lake we always have breaking news. The trick is to find the best, most non-obtrusive way to deliver it to you.
For up to the minute events news, photos, alerts, conversations, join us and fan us at My Long Lake on Facebook Don’t miss out on breaking news, photos etc. That is the best, most active way to keep on top of winter weather, current events, trivia clues, etc.
Touch Football game on Thanksgiving 2011
We’re always trying to deliver up to date content, but managing two blogs, facebook, twitter, foursquare can be cumbersome, so this is your invitation to continue to enjoy our blog at it’s new home (which is really it’s old home because it’s been there for quite awhile)
mylonglakeblog Still the same great information, just a different location!
So go there today to read up on all the events happening in and around the Town of Long Lake and Raquette Lake. If you have any questions or news to submit go to the mylonglake.com contact page and send us your note, it comes right into the home office.
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Now we’re gearing up for Celebrate the Season launching on Friday, so check out mylonglake.com/blog for the breakdown on the events.
Yours in the Blogging Hemisphere
View from the beach
Adirondack Affair Episode 2
Grace Duryea (Martha Byrne) has just arrived in Long Lake Adirondack Affair Episode 1 2011 after the death of her father. A mysterious stranger, Charlotte (Ellen Dolan) is very concerned about Grace’s arrival and is on edge and ready to reveal a secret.
An Adirondack Affair is an event held every fall in Long Lake for fans of soap operas to get a chance to get to know the nuts and bolts of producing a soap opera. In 2011 fans joined two-Time Emmy Winner Martha Byrne and Emmy-nominee Ellen Dolan for a fun-filled weekend including a cabaret performance and on-camera acting with the actresses. The actresses shot scripted scenes with attendees. Seventeen pages of material were shot in six hours at four different locations with little or no rehearsal. Fans received their dialogue the morning of taping. No auditions, no stress of the casting call, just crazy, fast, rapid fire acting fun in an incredibly short turnaround time. Director Fritz Brekeller (All My Children) hopped in with little prep time to pull all the elements together.
The Town of Long Lake is thrilled to receive national media attention in the Novemeber 21st, 2011 publication of the magazine CBS Soaps in Depth. Alexandra Roalsvig, Long Lake Tourism Director, helped organize and coordinate the weekend by inviting Martha Byrne, Ellen Dolan and Fritz Brekeller up to do on the spot video taping with fans. “This event was a chance to introduce Long Lake to a new audience. Fans have the one an one chance to interact with some terrific talent and I get the chance to feature local Long Lake businesses as the backdrop for the story. The actors are thrilled to come to the Adirondack region and help promote Long Lake to a wider audience.”
Featured in this episode is Jason Hall, a local Long Laker and noted musician and songwriter, current member of the Fat River Kings band. Jason has a huge catalog of original songs he has written, he often appears locally at Open Mike Nights and he will also be in the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts upcoming production of Cinderella.
Find a copy of CBS Soaps in Depth, on stands now (November 21) for photos, info and more scoop about the fun weekend.
In 2012 Adirondack Affair will be the last weekend in September. Don’t miss it! More original material to be scripted. For more info check out www.adirondackaffair.com
Link to: Adirondack Affair 2011 Episode 1
Long Lake Historical Society Shares Stories
October 27, 2011, by Abbie Verner
At the October meeting of the Long Lake Historical Society, Harold (Bunny) Austin and Tom Bissell were the guest speakers. Tom started off on the topic of why people came to Long Lake. He remarked that most early settlers came from western New England such as Vermont and western Massachusetts. In the 1830s there was a shortage of land and the land was “wearing” out from years of farming in those areas.
The early settlers were lured by advertisements extolling the virtues of moving to the Adirondacks where they would find fertile ground and fields of wheat waving in the gentle breezes. . . a slight exaggeration. In the early years they had some success with farming as the land in the Adirondacks had been solidly tree-covered and undisturbed. Fertility was shortlived, however, as the soil was poor, sandy and hardpan under the thin cover of fertile soil. Not to mention that these early settlers had to contend with tree stumps and rocks. Tom stated that although one could buy land for as little as a $1 an acres, it cost $10 to clear it.
View of Long Lake
Long Lake was the most isolated community in New York State. Roads were non-existent, the nearest post office was 40 miles away and the nearest grocery store 60 miles away. One of the members present remarked that it was much like it is today. In the winter the nearest grocery store is apx 22 miles away, but we still have our post office for the present.
By the 1840s people drifted away. Morehouse, a town in Hamilton County had a population of 150, but by 1840 only 10 residents remained.
The mine at Tahawus started c. 1826. Unlike the modern mine founded in 1941, there was not much opportunity for employment for Long Lakers as the route to Newcomb was primitive at best. Robert Shaw did work at the mine when his family faced an economic crisis He mostly stayed at the mine as it was a difficult journey to undertake on a daily basis. This first mine lasted until 1857, when the Panic of 1857 hit. Economy in the northeast took a nose dive.
Even though a blast furnace had just been installed in 1854, demand ceased.
The New Blast Furnace
Long Lakers continued to rely on farming for their livelihood. David Keller had the largest farm of 58 acres and was quite successful. He had farmed before coming to Long Lake so he had an advantage over his neighbors.
Meanwhile, back in 1813, the Schroon River opened to log driving, soon the Hudson opened and lumbering reached North Creek. It wasn’t until the 1880s that lumbering came to Long Lake. Along with lumbering came an increase in the population of the town. By 1910 there were 1000 people in Long Lake. Because Long Lake relied on the Raquette River, our logs went north and not to Glens Falls. Prices in the north were lower than those in the south so Blue Mountain Lakers and Raquette Lakers and Indian Lakers had an advantage over us as they could send their logs down to Glens Falls. Eventually, the railroad reached Long Lake West and logs would now be shipped south.
In 1869, Rev. W.H.H. Murray wrote Adventures in the Wilderness, which extolled the Adirondacks as a paradise for hunting, fishing, boating, scenic views, etc. thus beginning the tourist industry which still exists today. Tourists came. They hired guides, so farmers became guides. They required accommodations so hotels were built. The heyday of the grand Victorian hotels ended in the depression of the late 20s and 1930s. Sagamore Hotel 1888.
The Sagmore Hotel
Tom ended his economic history of Long Lake here of Long Lake here and Bunny Austin kicked in with stories of the old days in Long Lake.
He started with a tale about the snack bar. Chris Wallace was cooking, the restaurant was full, an out-of-town lady at the counter was gazing out over the frozen lake. She turned to Chris and asked in a thoughtful way, “what happens to all this ice on the lake in the summer?” Chris replied without a pause, “it sinks to the bottom.”
Next Bunny talked about cutting ice down at Hackett’s Camp Riverdale with George Cole, Ed Hamner, Bill Boone. At the time he was courting Evelyn, his wife, and missed seeing her while they were down the lake. There were no roads from Hacketts to the town. Bunny asked the boss, if he could take off after work at 4:30, walk to town on the frozen lake, see Evelyn and return by breakfast the next morning. His boss agreed so Bunny took off. He ran 100 paces on the frozen lake, walked 100 steps and pretty soon he reached Round Island where he found a grebe in distress. It was stuck trapped by ice and it would surely die so Bunny stopped and gently worked his hands under the birds breast and patiently worked the bird free and tucked her in his jacket and continued on his way. Looking ahead towards the Lagerquist camp, he could see a figure moving across the lake towards the camp. He appeared weighted down and was moving slowly. Bunny called out, thinking maybe he needed help, but the figure stopped briefly looked towards Bunny and turned and picking up the pace of his progress hustled to the shore and disappeared into the woods. By this time the bird in his jacket started to wiggle around so when Bunny opened his jacket the bird took off in a hurry flying who knows where. Bunny just kept on going and reached town visited with Evelyn and then returned back down the lake (about 10 miles) for breakfast.
Years later, Bunny learned that the mysterious figure on the lake was Joker Houghton Sr.. He thought Bunny was a conservation officer who was after him. Joker’s loaded down packbasket was chock full of venison which is why he hustled himself out of sight into the woods.
Adirondack Affair Episode One
On October 1st, 2011 fans of As The World Turns stars, Martha Byrne and Ellen Dolan, arrived in Long Lake NY to participate in a unique fan weekend. Soap fans had the chance to act one on one with real life soap opera stars.
The story follows Grace Duryea (Martha Byrne) as she returns to her hometown of Long Lake, NY for the reading of her estranged father’s will. She’s reluctantly returned after 20 years. The characters she interacts with are all played by fans participating in the unique weekend.
Charlotte (Ellen Dolan) is upset about Grace Duryea’s return to Long Lake. Charlotte wants to keep the ghosts of the past buried, but now it is nearly impossible.
Episode One
Please note: All characters are fictional and created for this project. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is a coincidence.
Special thanks to Ali Baba’s Liquor Store and Quackenbush’s Long View Wilderness Lodge in Long Lake, NY for providing us with great locations.
It’s just one of many events offered to visitors in Long Lake, NY. More episodes to follow and look for Adirondack Affair in 2012. You can act with the stars!
OctoberPETfest
On Saturday, October 8, 2011 the Town of Long Lake and the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts collaborated together for OcktoberPETfest. The event featured a craft fair, a magician, bounce house, a Pet Parade Contest, Pet Agility Course, a Pet Maze and a Punkin’ Chunkin’ Competition.
Click here to watch a highlight video featuring “It’s Not the Fall That Hurts” by The Caesars.
