BOLTON LANDING, N.Y. — The Adirondacks, land of long lakes and last Mohicans, do their big business in the summer, when upstate New York receives its meager annual allotment of warm weather. The forest-fringed waterways and low mountains leap to life as boaters and campers arrive from downstate and beyond. From the '20s cabins in the northern woods to the kitsch-rich village of Lake George, the place seems to buzz with merriment and just-born bugs.

Then everything freezes.

By mid-October, dozens of lodgings and restaurants have closed for winter. By January, the subzero nights have arrived, and the population has dwindled to skiers, snowmobilers and ice fishermen.

But from Labor Day to Columbus Day, maybe a few weeks beyond, the leaves turn, the lodging rates fall and the locals are happy to see you, especially on a weekday.

And then there is the Adirondack leaf season.

"Not only do we have the reds and the maples and the yellows of the beech and the birch, we have the brilliant yellow of tamarack, which you don't often find in New England," said Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club.

But, my introduction to the territory was not pretty. First, US Airways cost us a day by canceling our incoming flight to nearby Albany, N.Y., for crew-related reasons. Then the Sagamore resort, the grandest hotel in the region's southeastern corner, assigned us to a nonsmoking room that stank of cigarettes. (Could this be what happens, I wondered, when you vacation where New Yorkers vacation?) Then, killing time while the staff was finding another room for us, I found that the snack bar was charging a mandatory 18 percent gratuity. By dinner time, I was practically snarling.

And then the lake tide turned.

Part of the reason was simple scenery: First you see the thriving maple and oak and beech and willow and pine and spruce, then you look down and see it all again, upside down, in the waters of the spring-fed, 32-mile-long Lake George.

SAGAMORE AND MORE

And then there's the Sagamore hotel, where we spent three nights. The hotel, built on its own 72-acre island in 1883 and connected to the lake shore by a short causeway, burned twice and was rebuilt twice. The 350-room version that endures today really began with a 1930 redesign and expansion that was inspired by George Washington's home at Mount Vernon, Va., so the heart of the place is the column-lined veranda where two wings of the hotel come together, with lawn all around. It is grand in every sense.

But with its peak season so short, the Sagamore has had a rocky history. It fell idle for a few years in the early 1980s, then re-emerged with new owners and 200 new guest rooms and condos at one end, an indoor pool at the other.

Our room, chosen from the least-costly price category, was among those added in the '80s. It lay half-underground, with no lake view, where a butler's butler might be lodged. In those first grumpy minutes, I sat there considering the $233 a night it was costing. But it was spacious (roomier than most of the 100 rooms in the hotel's historic main building, in fact), and I grew to like the way light filtered down to our shady little balcony.

The longer we stayed, testing three of the resort's restaurants and a few of its kids' programs, the better the service seemed. And I will long remember lolling on the Sagamore's sloping lawn while our daughter, Grace, and her friend Caroline turned somersaults as only 3-year-olds can.

Off the hotel grounds, we took in the views from atop hiker- and driver-friendly Prospect Mountain. We clowned around on the big red Adirondack chair at Ben & Jerry's in high-toned Bolton Landing. And we lunched dockside at the Algonquin Restaurant while a sudden shower drummed on the canopy overhead.

"Sorry for the delay," servers said to us at several restaurants — even though we hadn't noticed any delay. (Vacationing where New Yorkers vacation: Hmm. ...)

We also explored the lake on a speedboat, checking out private estates and overgrown islands, and I took a quick spin in a kayak that mostly left me wishing we had more time.

We even got a kick out of the feature that most people like least about Lake George in summer — the parade of garish roadside businesses in Lake George Village at the waterway's southern end, which includes such specimens as Dr. Morbid's Haunted House, Tired John's (a restaurant), the House of Frankenstein Wax Museum, the Magic Castle, the Magic Forest, the Alien Encounter and the Tiki Resort, whose Waikiki Supper Club features "fire and knife acts."

KEY TO CONTINENT

The Up Yonda Farm, a few miles north of Bolton Landing, is a former summer-home property and takes up as much land as the Sagamore's little island. It is run as a year-round nature center, with a museum room of stuffed animals and plant samples, a butterfly house, picnic area, woodsy trails. In sticking near Lake George, we sampled only the tiniest, southeastern sliver of the Adirondacks. But at every turn, we bumped against landmarks. Back in the middle 18th century when the French and English were skirmishing over who would take over North America, one of the most crucial prizes was Fort Ticonderoga, which the French called "the key to a continent" but failed to hold.

By the late 19th century, the mightiest families of New York had begun building summer "Great Camps" here, giving birth to that rustic cabin-and-furniture fashion now known as Adirondack style. Legislators, meanwhile, had begun setting aside the 6 million acres that make up Adirondack Park, which includes about half-and-half public and private property. In all, the park covers more ground than Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon combined.

FORT TICONDEROGA

For my three-member family, learning the lake was like finding a new planet.

Tour by water, and the options include the Lac du Saint Sacrement, the Minne-haha and the Mohican (three large vessels operated by the Lake George Steamboat Co. in Lake George); and the Morgan, operated by the Sagamore in Bolton Landing.

But there's plenty to see by land. North on the two-lane New York Highway 9N, which runs up the west side of Lake George, the roadside kitsch gradually falls away, leaving only forest and peek-a-boo views of the lake, the path gently rising, falling and bending.

Continue to Fort Ticonderoga at the northern tip of the lake, and you pass the tempting tiny town of Hague and the log cabins and docks of semi-rustic resorts such as the old Trout House, one of the few year-round lodgings on the lake.

In the Ticonderoga exhibition rooms, are iron breastplates, arrowheads, etched powder horns and a host of pistols and rifles, where many boys and their fathers lingered and marveled. And from the high ramparts of the star-shaped fort, it was easy to understand the site's importance: It looks down upon the waters of Lake Champlain in one direction, Lake George in another.

But be warned: On Oct. 21, the fort closes until May.