5 – Over reliance on the automobile. Too often visitors spend hours driving around the Adirondacks from small town to small town (or big town to big town) without actually seeing anything. Stop. Get out of the car. Go hiking, take a train, boat, or ferry ride. Rent a boat, go swimming, ride a bike or rent a moped – even just getting out of the car at that scenic look-out will open new experiences.

4 – Expecting all the comforts of home. What’s the point of coming to the Adirondacks if you’re going to duplicate home life? Go camping, sleep outside in the yard of your mountain respite. Leave your cell phone home (or at least packed away for emergencies). If we had all the comforts of home you have, it would be your home, not ours.

3 – Not Getting beyond the big tourist traps. Leave Lake George, Lake Placid, Old Forge, and the other tourist trap towns and explore the wonders the Adirondacks has to offer. That doesn’t mean head to the High Peaks either – if you want to get away, ask a local about their favorite spot and you’ll be surprised what you discover. Some of the greatest places in the Adirondacks are virtually unknown to most travelers.

2 – Not learning about local history and ecology. You can’t possibly get a real sense of the Adirondacks without doing some homework. Pick up a guide book before you get here, take a guided tour with a naturalist, or at one of the area’s many museums. That thing you saw but wasn’t sure what it was? You’d have known if you spent some time understanding the history and ecology of the Adirondacks before you got here.

1 – Looking down on locals. Just because you come from a big city, have 24-hour convenience stores, fancy restaurants and hotels, you wear fashionable clothes, drive a cool car or SUV, doesn’t mean you are special. The odds are, you’d have just as tough a time dealing with living in the Adirondacks as we would living in yer big city suburbia. We are here because we want to be – don’t assume we’re some backwater hillbillies without a sense of culture, technology, or the latest celebrity gossip. Odds are, if we don’t know about it, that’s because we could care less.

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