The Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST) and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County have launched an updated Adirondack Cuisine Trails platform through its flagship Adirondack Harvest program. This will make it easier than ever for visitors and residents to discover the farms, markets, restaurants, and agricultural experiences that celebrate the Adirondacks’ local food culture.The refreshed digital platform offers a more intuitive way to explore the six suggested routes throughout the Lake Champlain, Whiteface, Saranac Lake, Lake Clear, Lake Placid, Tupper Lake, and Clinton County regions. Visitors can use the trails as self-guided culinary adventures, traveling at their own pace and choosing particular stops along the way. The new platform also features interactive mapping and navigation capabilities, allowing users to easily view participating locations on a map, find nearby trail stops, access directions, and navigate between each stop directly from their mobile device. Travelers are encouraged to check business hours and seasonal offerings before visiting, as many farms and businesses operate on seasonal schedules.“With 12 million annual visitors to the Adirondacks, we cannot overstate the tremendous potential for tourism to positively impact our region's economy. In that way, the new digital platform will provide a level of interactivity from the public to our local farms, producers, farm-to-table retailers, and restaurants,” said Adirondack Harvest Program Lead, Isabella Susino. “The ongoing development of the Adirondack Cuisine Trails includes in-app promotions from trail members to increase visibility of their farm stores and our regional farmers markets, new printed materials, location check-ins, and much more." The trails showcase the diversity of Adirondack agriculture and invite visitors to experience the region beyond the plate. Along the way, travelers can tour working farms, meet local producers, sample handcrafted cheeses and maple products, browse farmers markets, visit orchards and greenhouses, and enjoy seasonal experiences that celebrate the region's agricultural heritage."The six Adirondack Cuisine Trails are a truly unique project designed to elevate the role of agritourism in the larger Adirondack experience. Visitors to the park are enamored with the authenticity of the North Country, and we feel that the trails are well-positioned to provide a meaningful experience for our guests, our farmers, and producers," said Susino. The Adirondack Cuisine Trails were established in 2018 by the Adirondack Cuisine Trail Network, a nonprofit coalition of local food partners formed to develop and administer six culinary trails across Essex, Clinton, and Franklin counties. Once the trails were established, its mission expanded to highlight Adirondack and North Country farms, food producers, farm-to-table restaurants, and retailers, encouraging visitors and residents to explore the region through its local food culture.Working closely with Adirondack Harvest, a nonprofit marketing initiative founded in 2001 to promote local farmers and food producers, the cuisine trails quickly became a popular self-guided culinary experience. In 2021, Adirondack Harvest assumed leadership of the Adirondack Cuisine Trails and has continued to grow the initiative while advancing its mission of supporting local farms, food producers, farm-to-table retailers, and restaurants throughout the region.The enhanced platform also creates new opportunities for participating farms and businesses to showcase seasonal offerings, new products, special events, and promotions. Updated user and location analytics will help ROOST and Adirondack Harvest better understand how visitors engage with the trails, providing valuable insights to strengthen future agritourism marketing efforts and economic viability for the region’s farmers and producers."The Adirondack Cuisine Trails celebrate the incredible diversity of farms, food producers, and culinary businesses that make our region unique," said ROOST’s Southern Essex County Regional Manager, Isabelle Bureau. "Our goal is to grow awareness of local food and agriculture while encouraging visitors and residents to support the farms and businesses that make the Adirondacks such a vibrant place to explore."To learn more and begin exploring the Adirondack Cuisine Trails, visit adirondackcuisinetrail.com/ or adirondackharvest.com. Businesses interested in cuisine trail membership should visit adirondackharvest.com/membership or call (518) 962-4810.The Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism is a destination marketing and management organization that leads tourism initiatives in Essex and Hamilton counties, along with the Adirondack communities of Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, and Tupper Lake. ROOST’s mission is to enhance the quality of life for residents by managing and diversifying the region’s tourism economy while promoting sustainable visitation.A program of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County, Adirondack Harvest is dedicated to strengthening the local food system across the greater Adirondack and North Country region by connecting farmers, producers, businesses, and consumers. Through education, marketing, and community partnerships, Adirondack Harvest promotes local agriculture and expands access to locally grown food to visitors and residents alike.

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Fort Ticonderoga event features hut building in 1776[/caption]Join Fort Ticonderoga for a weekend building project! Discover how soldiers of the Continental Army built huts at Ticonderoga in 1776 and even try your hand at colonial construction techniques. This living history weekend entitled “Lodging as the Nature of Campaign will Admit” takes place Saturday and Sunday, September 13-14, 9:30 am to 5 pm. Admission to the event is included in the Fort Ticonderoga’s general admission ticket. The Fort Ticonderoga experience also includes museum exhibitions, tours, historic trades, gardens, hiking trails, the six-acre Heroic Corn Maze and more! To learn more about the event visit www.FortTiconderoga.org or call 518-585-2821.“Watch American ingenuity in action as soldiers use boards, posts, and beams to build their new homes at Ticonderoga to prepare for the winter season,” said Stuart Lilie, Director of Interpretation. “Discover the history detective story undertaken by Fort Ticonderoga museum staff as they pieced together their research on this unique housing built at Fort Ticonderoga in 1776.” The Ticonderoga peninsula was already an old battlefield and encampment site by the summer of 1776 when American soldiers began digging in to block a British invasion southward. For soldiers, such as the Fourth Pennsylvania Battalion, their first priority was to erect earthworks with which to hold this vital ground. As the works neared completion and autumn weather began early that September, these soldiers turned their attention to building more hospitable living quarters than their canvas tents. While many Army encampments, such as that built across Lake Champlain on Mount Independence, were built in woods, the Ticonderoga peninsula had been laid bare during the French and Indian War. Without a ready supply of logs, soldiers used sawn lumber milled at the saw mill operated by the army on the La Chute River, now located in present day Ticonderoga. Fort Ticonderoga: America’s Fort™Located on Lake Champlain in the beautiful 6 million acre Adirondack Park, Fort Ticonderoga is an independent not-for-profit educational organization, historic site, and museum that ensures that present and future generations learn from the struggles, sacrifices, and victories that shaped the nations of North America and changed world history. Serving the public since 1909, Fort Ticonderoga engages 70,000 visitors annually and is dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Fort Ticonderoga’s history. Accredited by the American Association of Museums, Fort Ticonderoga offers programs, historic interpretation, tours, demonstrations, and exhibits throughout the year and is open for daily visitation May 10 through November 2, 2014. The 2014 season features the Fort’s newest exhibit Founding Fashion: The Diversity of Regularity in 18th-Century Military Clothing which brings together for the first time the museum's wide variety of important 18th-century clothing, related artwork, and archeological fragments to illustrate the diversity of clothing worn by the armies who served at Fort Ticonderoga during the French & Indian War and Revolution. Visit www.FortTiconderoga.org for a full list of ongoing programs or call 518-585-2821. America’s Fort is a registered trademark of the Fort Ticonderoga Association.

Our destinations in the media August 9, 2014: Adirondack Adventures Await - Bryen Dunn Article providing an overview of the outdoor recreational opportunities in the Adirondacks, featuring fly fishing in Wilmington, mountain biking, hiking, and these businesses: High Peaks Cyclery, Nessmuk's Wilderness Guide Service, Two Fly Shop, Hungry Trout Resort, Bark Eater Trail Alliance, Lake Placid Pub & Brewery, Lake Placid Spirits Distillery, and Smoke Signals. READ ARTICLE

Our destinations in the Media August 6, 2014: EatDrinkTravel.com: Green Cuisine in the Adirondacks, New York, Alicia Vandeweghe Second in a series of articles about the Lake Champlain Region of the Adirondacks. This one features the following businesses/organizations: Turtle Island Cafe, Lake Placid Pub & Brewery, Dogwood Bread Company, READ ARTICLE