• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

Cedarwood Bed and Breakfast   (Photo: Courtesy of Cedarwood)

Lose yourself in knotty-walled rusticity at the Black Mountain Lodge (from $79) on Route 8 in North Creek. Ex–Queens resident Marion Eagan took over the well-priced, 25-room motel in 2005 and gave it a thorough redo; the new linens and carpeting plus the spotless housekeeping make it feel newly built.

Keep your eyes peeled for grouse and barred owls while strolling the groomed cross-country trails behind the Cedarwood Bed and Breakfast (from $135), five miles from downtown North Creek. Each room in the classic, antique-strewn New England inn has a historical theme; one of the nicest is the Poet’s Room, a peach-colored homage to Jeanne Robert Foster, an early-twentieth-century writer who once lived in the house.

For a little (okay, a lot) more luxury, indulge in high beds, stone fireplaces, and Jacuzzis at the Fern Lodge (from $350; rate includes breakfast) off Route 28 in Chestertown, about fifteen minutes from North Creek. If you don’t have the energy for paddling the adjacent, three-mile-long lake (the Fern's innkeepers will loan you a kayak), borrow a movie from the DVD library and get cushy in the downstairs screening room with its nine recliners and Bose sound system.

Published on Nov 7, 2007 as a web exclusive.