Jun 13, 2006:    The interactive map is taking much longer to finish than I had figured, but progress is happening on it.  As of June 10th, it appears that DJ's has reopened.  In addition, the Fire and Ice is coming along nicely, and should be open again very soon by the looks of it.

    Feb 28, 2006:    A significant update on the website today.  I've nearly finished all the links for the West side of Canada Street on block two of the interactive map.  This took a long time, it was a LOT more work than I realized it would be, but I think it is an awesome feature for the website.  I have just a few more links to do on the West side, which I hope to have finished perhaps tonight, or tomorrow, and then I can get started piecing together the East side of Canada Street block two.  I hope to finish mapping the main part of the village before the start of the 2006 summer season.

    Feb 19, 2006:    The first big piece of news today is a sad one.  On the night of Thursday, Feb 16th, a fire heavily damaged the Fire and Ice bar and grill at Mayard Center in Lake George.  This fire was very close to a year after the fire that damaged DJ's Nite Club.  While the fire at DJ's was ruled accidental, that is not the case with the fire at Fire and Ice.  The bar was closed down for the season, and "winterized."  The power, and gas were turned off.  State police said the fire was arson, although no information was available when I wrote this as to whether chemical accelerants had been found.  I don't drink, so this isn't a big loss to me personally, but there is apparently an arsonist at work in Lake George, and who knows what his next target will be.  Beyond that, I am very sad to see a hard working family loose their business.  Hopefully, their insurance will take care of them, and they will be able to rebuild.
    In other news, the Great Escape lodge is now open, and the first few reports I've read look pretty positive.  My understanding is that the new restrooms / visitors center is pretty much complete, and should be open for the tourist season.  Work is well underway on the new pedestrian bridge at the Great Escape, and it should be ready for opening day, which is Saturday May 13th.  New for 2006 at the Great Escape is a $10 parking fee.  If you plan on going to the park more than two times, buy a season parking pass online for $35.  Also, season passes are a bit more expensive this year, at $65.  Grab those season passes now, before the prices go up.
    It looks like changes at the park this year will be smaller, but are meant to enhance the guest experience.  The park will be smoke free for 2006, with a couple of designated areas for people to visit when they need to smoke.  There are also supposed to be employees in each bathroom, to keep things clean and neat (I suspect they will also be needed to enforce the no smoking policy), and there is to be a parade every day in the park.  I'm sure there will be other small changes, but I haven't heard anything yet.  In the village, I have heard that Pizza Jerks moved off Canada St., to a side street (I believe over by Mini Chopper), the hot dog shop has moved from the village mall to Pizza Jerks old shop, and I believe that a new coffee shop is opening up on Canada St. somewhere as well.  I will have more details about all of these happenings soon.

    Dec 03, 2005:    Well, It's been a while since I've updated this section.  Things in my personal life have been a bit hectic, and I haven't really had much time to work on the website.  It seems that construction on the new Great Escape hotel is coming along nicely, and plans are for the hotel to be open sometime after Christmas.  Final planning is supposed to be finished on the pedestrian bridge over Rt. 9 for the Great Escape as well, and if things go according to plan, that bridge should be open for the beginning of the season in 2006.  There have been some rumors floating around about a roller coaster being added to the park for 2006, but they are only rumors, and as of right now I personally don't see it happening.  I have also seen some indication that another pedestrian bridge is being built in the area of the outlets.  I just discovered that a diner which I used to LOVE (Betty's Place) and though had closed down (as of the 2005 season, Betty's old building was the home of Number 1 Pizza / Italian Bistro) has actually just relocated.  Betty's is now in the Lake George Forum building, so if you find yourself looking for a GREAT breakfast at a reasonable price (well, the prices were reasonable before she moved, I can't be sure what they are in the new location), stop by the Lake George Forum, and visit Betty's Forum Cafe, or give her a call at (518) 668-2200

    Mar 09:     During the last few days I've written a bunch more reviews for the website.  I've also reworked the General Information page, giving it a new look.  Finally, I've updated the Entertainment page, adding a bunch more listings.

    Mar 04:    I have lots of progress to report.  First off, regarding the website, things are going well.  I've done a lot of work verifying links, and information.  I've updated / added listings on the Hotels / motels page, and the Restaurants page.  I've added the Seasons page (it is very basic right now, but will have more season specific information soon).  I've verified all the hyperlinks on the links page.  I've added a Get Listed page telling business owners how to get listed on this site.  I've also added a message board, Night Life page, and a list of Churches, and places of worship.

    As for Lake George progress, the new hotel at the Great Escape is coming along nicely.  In addition, the Great Escape recently officially announced the addition of Looney Tunes National Park.  This is the official name they have given the area near the old Coco Loco where all the new rides are going.  The Wizards Unwitting Apprentice show will be replaced with Looney Tunes We Rock.  Jungle Land is getting a face lift.  Eight or Nine new rides are being added to the area, and the Coco Loco will receive Looney Tunes Theming.  With a little luck, all of this will be ready for opening day which is Saturday May 14th this year.

    Feb 09:   Many of the pages on this site have now been updated with a new look.  The rest will be changed soon.  I've updated many of the hyperlinks, and removed ones that no longer work.  My favorites page has been updated with more links.  Many new pictures have been added to the Village, Magic Forest, and The Great Escape pictures pages, and I've added a picture page for the Fort William Henry.

    Feb 03:  It has been so long since I updated this site that I don't even remember when the last time was.  There is much news to share, so please bear with me.  First off, news about the site.  Over the last year or so, quite a few people have contacted me to ask if I was going to be updating the site.  I told them all that I hoped to get to it soon.  Well, soon took a bit longer than I expected, but updates are starting to happen now.  The BIG news, as you should know by now, I've moved my website.  Tom's Lake George site is no longer hosted on my personal web space at Best Web.  I left Best Web, and switched over to Verizon DSL.  Since the personal web space provided by Verizon wasn't going to be anywhere near big enough to host Tom's Lake George Site, I decided it was time to get my own domain, and move the web site to a professional host.  The web site is now at http://www.tomslakegeorgesite.com.  My new email is tom@tomslakegeorgesite.com if any of you want to get in touch with me.

    As a result of the move to the new server, problems cropped up with the web site.  There are hundreds of broken links, and other various problems that always come to light when you move a web site.  Slowly, I am correcting the problems, as well as introducing a new look to the site.  In the days, and weeks ahead I intend to add more pictures, some short video clips, set up a message forum, and add some other new features and information to the site, so check back every once in a while to see the progress.  If you find any bad links, or other problems with the site, or you have an idea for a feature to add, or some information you would like to see on the web site, email me and let me know.

    Now for some Lake George news, well there are some big things in the works at The Great Escape.  Work is underway on the foundation for the new hotel behind the Adirondack Coach House.  This Six Flags owned hotel will be connected to the Coach House, and will also feature an indoor water park.  In conjunction with the building of the hotel, the parking lots on the West side of Rt. 9 have been raised so they are no longer three or four feet below the level of the road.  A traffic light will be relocated from between the parking lots to the North end of the property, where a new entrance into a "ring road" will direct traffic around the back of the hotel, and into the parking lots for the park.

    Also in conjunction with the hotel project, a new pedestrian bridge is going to be built (hopefully ready for the beginning of the 2005 season) between the West parking lots, and the park entrance area, so park visitors will no longer have to cross Rt. 9.  Finally, a whole new array of childrens rides will be installed near the Coco Loco restaurant.  The Coco Loco will be renamed the Character Cafe, and Jungle land will receive some rehabilitation.

    Dec 25:  I have been incredibly busy lately, updates are way behind!  I just added a new page to the site: Favorites.  It is a list of all my favorite places to stay, and eat, and things to do in the Lake George area.  It included hotels and motels, campgrounds, restaurants, diners, cafe's, theme parks, mini golf courses, all the things that I really enjoy when I am in Lake George.  The page isn't finished yet, but each listing will eventually have a small popup description when you hold the mouse over it, and then when you click on it, you will be taken to the appropriate web page.  If the listing doesn't have a web page, you will be taken to a page I have created with a review, and some basic information.

    For those who are interested, H&H Computer Systems no longer exists on it's own.  That was this webmasters personal venture.  I have combined forces with a very talented artist, and the result is a new business named Creative Touch Advertising  In addition to designing web sites, we also design flyers, business cards, company letterhead and logos.  We can design pretty much any printed or online advertising you may need, and handle any of your graphical needs as well.  We offer TOP quality results at affordable rates!

    Sept 19:  Wow, I have been so busy working on the withinAnotheR web site that I haven't updated this site in a LONG time.  Well, lets see, where to start.  I have taken several trips to Lake George already this year.  The first was in early April, to validate our season passes.  It was only a one day trip, we went up on a Saturday morning, and returned home that night.  After validating the passes, we went to the village to hang out, and do a bit of shopping, then have supper.  After supper I intended to drive home, but decided at the last minute to cruise down beach road, then we noticed that 18 holes around the world was open, so we had to play a round of miniature golf.  After the golf, my daughter HAD to have ice cream, so we visited Martha's for some awesome ice cream.  It was pretty late by the time we finished the ice cream, and I seriously thought about getting a motel room for the night, but I decided to drive home.  It was after 11:00 that night by the time we got back home.  In early May I visited again, with my wife, my daughter, my mother, and my cousin Chuck.  We went up on a Saturday morning, and came home on Sunday morning.  Then, a couple of weeks later, my wife, my daughter, and I went back for a one day, one night stay, in part to take care of a mistake in the billing on my credit card from our previous trip (well, that was mostly just an excuse to visit Lake George again, I could have handled that over the phone).  The last week of July, and the first week of August was our two week vacation.  Then, just before school started, in the end of August, my wife, my daughter, and I returned for a one day, one night camping trip.  I am planning to take at least ONE one day, one night trip during October.

   I still haven't had a chance to visit Dr. Morbids, or the alien encounter.  The Alien Encounter has a friendly alien for groups with young children, but even the promise of a funny, friendly alien was not enough to convince my daughter to give it a try.  Lumberjack Pass has reworked some of the course, to make it a bit easier to keep the ball out of the water.  The course is a lot more fun now, that you don't have to go fishing for your ball on nearly every hole.  Gino and Tony's continued to be one of our favorite places to eat this year, along with the Lookout Cafe.  My daughters favorite shop in the village (and one of mine too) is Kites Tails and Toys (visit them online at http://www.kitestailstoys.com ) where we purchased some wonderful toys this year, including a huge Frisbee, and an awesome kite.  Though I haven't gotten any of this years pictures up on the site yet, I did get a digital camera, which at least makes it a lot easier to get the pictures into the computer.

    Jan 10:  It has been a while since I did any updates.  I am doing some minor reworking of the web pages to make them look a bit better, basically cleaning up sloppy work I have done in the past.  The site is now optimized for viewing at 1024 x 768 resolution.  It will be viewable at higher resolutions, but will look funny.  At lower resolutions it will not display properly.  I recently purchased a video capture device.  Shortly after I got it, my video camera decided to take a vacation.  I am waiting for it to return from being serviced, but hope to have some small video clips posted in the not too distant future.

    I have also upgraded to Windows XP.  While it is a smooth, and stable operating system, I had a LOT of problems when I first upgraded.  Things are better now, and I am again able to work on the web page, but my scanner is NOT supported in XP.  As a result, the rest of my summer vacation pictures are sitting here waiting for me to buy a new scanner so that I can get them posted to the pages.

    I received an email from The Great Escape, shortly before Christmas, informing me that season passes are now available for $59.99.  The email said they make great presents for the holidays.  While it may be too late for the holidays, I seem to remember them selling for closer to $80 during the summer last year, unless you bought 4 or more at one time, so if you are buying for less than 4 people, now might be the time to grab your passes!

    Nov 6:  We took two short trips to Lake George in October.  Both for only one day.  We visited The Great Escape for the Freight Fest both times.  It was great fun, and is perfect for the whole family, the children will love the daytime trick or treat trail, as well as the shows.  For the adults there is the haunted house, and every one will love going on the rides, since the lines are MUCH shorter than during the normal summer season.  I have added some pictures from this summer, though I still have many to scan.  I also now have a video capture device, so there will be some short videos added sometime in the near future.  My background has been changed to show a little patriotism.  I have also added some new restaurants to the food page.

   Don't forget Lake George during the winter months!  There is hunting, and skiing, and ice fishing, cross country skiing, snow mobiling, snow shoeing, shopping, horse drawn sleigh rides, and down hill skiing just to name a few.  Family snow tubing, and warm fires to cuddle up by are great too.  There is hockey just down the road in Glens Falls, and during February there is the winter carnival, with all kinds of racing, and contest, not to mention fireworks on Saturday night!  I am going to try to make the winter carnival this year for my first time!

   Aug 28:  We just returned home from our two week summer camping trip to Lake George.  The new ride in The Great Escape is called the sky coaster.  All I can tell you is it is out of control.  Basically there are three towers.  Together they are sort of in the shape of the letter A.  The first two towers represent the bottoms of the legs in the A, and there are a pair of cables hanging from them that support a harness in between the two towers.  The harness hangs a bit over six feet above the ground.  The third tower represents the point at the top of the A.  There is a third cable on this tower.  Riders are strapped into the harness from the first two towers, and the cable from the third tower is connected.  Then the riders are hoisted up toward the third tower, to a height of about 165 feet!  When they reach the top, the pull a cord, and are released to free fall, and then swing through the air for almost two full minutes.  During the free fall speeds approach 70 mph!  The cost of the ride is $40 for one person, $50 for two ($ 25 each) and $60 for 3 riders ($20 each).  Too expensive, AND too scary for me!

    The Great Escape is now offering a ride pass for $10 (in addition to your park admission price) which will allow you to go on five rides without waiting in the normal line.  It really sucks if you ask me, I paid sixty bucks for my season pass, and I don't think anyone should be able to buy a spot in line in front of me.

 There is another new miniature golf course.  It is near the outlets, next to the doll shop.  It is called lumberjack pass.  It is built on a hill.  The first 9 holes are going down the hill, and the remaining 9 are going back up the hill.  There are so many places where the ball can fall into the streams and pools that the course is stocked with many long handled nets for retrieving floating balls.  They charge extra if you play after 5:00 at night, which is a shame, because the course is completely out in the sun, and gets very hot during the day.  Also, the holes are very challenging, and might be a bit much for young children.  My daughter was pretty upset at how often her ball wound up "swimming with the fishes."  Over all, we had a good time, and will probably play the course again.  A strong point in their favor, they sell Coca Cola products!

    The old Movie Stars wax museum is now Dr. Morbids Haunted House of Wax!  It looks very interesting, and there seem to be plenty of people taking the tour.  Sadly, I ran out of time, and never got the chance to visit, but I look forward to checking this new attraction out.

    There is another new attraction on Canada Street, upstairs from Gino and Tonys restaurant.  It is called Alien Encounter, and is a tour of an alien research center.  This also looked pretty interesting, but again, I just didn't get the chance to check it out.

    I am in the process of scanning in 11 rolls of film to add to the pictures pages.  Village 8, has been updated, and I have added Village 9.  More to come soon!

   May 29:  We spent a couple of days over the Memorial Day weekend in Lake George.  The Great Escape purchased the mother goose ride which was the first ride that Charles Wood purchased for Storytown USA back in 1956.  It is great to see such an old children's favorite in use again.  The Ghost Town railway is back in service.  Sky Lab, in the fest area, is gone.  There is a crane in the area, as well as some sections of a support column, but I am not sure what ride it is for.  We didn't get a chance to see any of the new shows, but hope to soon.

    The new Pirates Cove, near the intersection of Rt. 9 and Rt. 9N is open.  It is a single 18 hole course (the other Pirates Cove has two courses) and the holes are fairly simple, in that there are no mechanical obstacles, and it is fairly easy to get a decent score.  The layout, and landscaping  are great, and we had a good time at the course.

    We had lunch in the South Shore Grill (which replaced the Friendlys Cafe on Canada St) on Friday.  The food was pretty good, though the prices seemed a bit high for a cafe, more in keeping with the pricing in a restaurant.  We had supper Friday night at the Lookout Cafe, which is still one of the best kept secrets in the village.  The prices are a little high, but the food is great, and the portions make up for the slightly high prices.  What a great place to enjoy a meal in the fresh Adirondack air, with the lake in the background.

    Apr 26:  Some minor house cleaning.

    Season passes purchased from The Great Escape this year are valid at any six flags theme park, once they have been validated at The Great Escape.

    The new construction on Rt. 9 and Rt. 9N that I mentioned in the Aug 14 update is definitely a miniature golf course.  It is a Pirates Cove.

    mar 13:  Another small update.  A couple of new pictures added to Village page 7 and great escape 5  Using Tie Downs tip page added to the Camping Guide and some links fixed/added to help site navigation.

    This year, The Great Escape has replaced the Ice Review with the Incredible Acrobats of China show.  They have also added the Vince Carmen - Witness The Impossible show.

    January 12:  Small update recently, just fixing and updating links, and changing the look of some of the pages.

     December 2:  Some things never change: I am still in search of the right video capture card to work with.  I have uploaded about 50 new pictures, bringing the total to over 350 now.  The new pictures are from a trip we took to Lake George for presidents day weekend.  Many of the pictures are from the Fright Fest at The Great Escape.

    August 28:  I just uploaded 113 new pictures, and some other minor updates.  I'm still looking for a video capture device, if anyone knows of a good one that is affordable, let me know.  I just signed a new contract with my ISP, I now have 100 MB of web space available to me!  It is a good thing, because I was getting really close to outgrowing the 20 MB I had before.

    August 14:  There have been a few changes in Lake George for the 2000 season.  Friendly's Cafe is gone.  It has been replaced by the South Shore Grille.  I didn't try it out, but it can't be much worse than Friendly's was.

    The former Lake George Zoological park is now an extension of the parking lot for the Great Escape. They have added a lot of space to their parking, and parking continues to be a big problem for them, so I would expect to see them buy up additional land near the park to expand parking more!

    The Lake George Action Park (formerly the Lake George Ride and Amusement park, and Gas Light Village) has closed down (big big bummer).  Charles Wood (owner of all the above named parks, and the man who built Story Town which is now the Great Escape) will be auctioning off the rides, as well as much of his personal collection of memorabilia including many of the pieces which made up the former Cavalcade of Cars (part of Gaslight Village), a double decker bus which used to run in Gaslight Village, and later was an advertisement for Charlie's Saloon (also run by Charles Wood) and many other items.  The auction will be held in early September, and Charles has agreed to sell the piece of land to the village and town of Lake George for 2 million dollars (his original price was 8 million) to be used as the future  home of a convention center.  I'm not necessarily against a convention center, but I do NOT think this is the right site for it! I for one am VERY sorry, and sad to see the Action Park closed down, I was so happy when it reopened just a few years ago, it is really a shame to see it go!

   On a more positive note, on the North West corner of the intersection of Rt. 9 with Rt. 9N there is new construction which appears to be a miniature golf course.

   A new lake side walkway has been built extending from the existing walkway near the public comfort station at the intersection of Beach Rd. and Canada St., to the public dock at Crandell park.

   There appears to be a new leather shop on Canada St. At the moment I do not remember the name of it, but when I do I will post it here.

   The leather outlet now is online http://www.theleatheroutlet.com

   Jamin' Leather has left the Lake George area (actually, they have left New York all together and are now in Myrtle Beach SC, or at least that is what their web site says. Check out their own history which is posted on their web site, for a list of all the locations they have left behind because of "sleazy landlords," or lease troubles.) You can still shop them online at http://www.jaminleather.com

   New to my web page, click on the "tom's Lake George site," banner at the top of any page to return to the Lake George site index!  I have just returned from a two week stay in Lake George, and have 15 rolls of pictures to go through and scan, so there will be a big picture update!  I also have 4 hours of video tapes.  I will be shopping for a video capture device shortly, and plan on posting some short video clips to the web site!