I will go stir-crazy if I am stuck at home

October 5, 2010 10:18 AM

Help me get away for the weekend! I'm in Ottawa and need to get out of town. Problem: it's Columbus Day/ Thanksgiving and everything is booked everywhere.

I'm stressed and overworked and have decided to take an extra day off, either Friday or Tuesday, to give myself a full four day weekend (Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving). Yay! But where should I go?

My boyfriend and I are in Ottawa; we originally wanted to go camping in the Adirondacks (Adirondak Loj at Lake Placid) but completely forgot that it's Columbus Day weekend in the States. And leaf-peeping season. Needless to say, everything is booked everywhere.

Metafilter, where should we go, what should we do? Camping and hiking is preferable but really the main requirement is to be somewhere we can relaaax and decompress. Fairly budget-friendly would be nice and I prefer to be out of the Ottawa/ Gatineau region so I can literally escape for the weekend.

posted by kitkatcathy to travel & transportation around Ottawa, ON (3 answers total)

How about Potsdam as a base of operations? I'm guessing that the schools there will be quiet for the weekend (Clarkson Univ. and SUNY Potsdam) and maybe the several hotels/B&Bs around there will have some beds.

Anyway if you can stay in Potsdam, Canton, or Massena (in descending order of desirability, with a huge dropoff between Canton and Massena), it's only a 80-120 minute drive to Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, the High Peaks/Adk Loj region.

There's an Adirondack museum called The Wild Center in Tupper Lake which I hear is surprisingly very nice.

Good luck. And, when I was stir crazy and living in Potsdam, by the way, I used to go to Ottawa. Nice town.
posted by Buffaload at 10:32 AM on October 5, 2010

Most National Park / National Forest Campgrounds in the US only set aside a portion of their campsites as available by reservation. The rest are first come first served. If you can take off Friday and be at the campground early afternoon you should not have much trouble finding a campsite. Spend some time on the National park Service website to figure out how many sites are first come and first serve and target the campground with the best odds.

If you are willing to go primitive and hike in somewhere you'll have lots of options too.
posted by COD at 10:47 AM on October 5, 2010

Come couch-surf through Montreal. You can stay with me on Friday but I leave on Saturday at noon for family stuff in another province. I live right downtown.
posted by lizbunny at 11:07 AM on October 5, 2010