The Most Beautiful Fall Drive in the North Country? Take the Long Way Home

There is a particular kind of Saturday that only seems to happen in Northern New York. You walk outside in the morning and the air has changed. It's cool enough for a sweatshirt, the trees that were green a week ago are beginning to turn red and orange around the edges, and for once there isn't anywhere you absolutely have to be.

That's the kind of morning when you should get in the car. Not because you need groceries or because somebody has soccer practice. This time, grab a coffee, put the kids in the back, throw a couple of jackets and an empty cooler in the car and leave Watertown with one simple plan: take the long way home.

Our route heads south from Watertown through Copenhagen, Lowville and Croghan before wandering toward the forests and backroads of Tug Hill. Along the way, we'll find something good to eat, bring home a few things made right here in the North Country, get out of the car for a little exploring and hopefully discover at least one place we've driven past a hundred times without ever stopping.

Leaving Watertown

One of the best things about this trip is how quickly the landscape begins to change. As you leave Watertown and head south toward Copenhagen, traffic thins, buildings spread farther apart and farms begin taking over the view. Before long, the city has quietly disappeared behind you and the horizon has opened into the rolling countryside leading toward Lewis County.

That's really where the road trip begins. The Tug Hill region sits between Lake Ontario and the Adirondacks and stretches across portions of Jefferson, Lewis, Oswego and Oneida counties. It's a landscape of working farms, forests, rivers, deep gorges, waterfalls and small communities, and in the fall those different landscapes create a drive that seems to change every few miles.

You don't have to travel to Vermont or spend a weekend in the Adirondacks to find an incredible fall drive. Some of it has been sitting less than an hour from home all along.

Copenhagen: Our First Reason to Stop

Copenhagen is the kind of village that's easy to drive through without thinking much about it, especially if you've lived here for years. On this trip, that's exactly what we're trying not to do. Slow down, look around and let the first stop of the day happen naturally.

If everyone is already getting hungry, this is a good place to solve that problem. Local restaurants and businesses along the route can become part of the experience instead of packing lunch from home. The larger Black River Valley corridor through Copenhagen, Lowville, Castorland and Croghan is closely tied to agriculture and locally produced food, so don't plan every stop before leaving home. If you see a roadside farm stand with pumpkins stacked outside, a maple sign at the end of a driveway or something else that makes somebody in the car say, “What's that?”, turn around and find out.

The Road Starts to Change

As you continue toward Lowville, the scenery begins changing almost without you noticing it. Farms stretch farther into the distance, the hills become more pronounced and patches of forest grow thicker. Every so often you'll crest a rise and suddenly see autumn color stretching across the horizon.

This is also a good point to get the kids involved instead of waiting for the inevitable question about how much longer they're going to be in the car. Have them find the brightest red tree, count tractors, look for an old barn or take the best photograph of the trip. If you're willing to surrender some editorial control, let everybody take one picture they think belongs on ClickNNY.

By the time you reach Lowville, you've done something surprisingly difficult: you've spent part of the morning looking out the window instead of at a screen. And now it's time to eat.

Lowville: Put Something Local in the Cooler

Lowville is where I'd intentionally slow the trip down again. Instead of treating the village as another waypoint, find somewhere local for lunch, walk around for a while and make room in the cooler for something that actually came from Lewis County.

Dairy farming isn't a tourist attraction here. It's part of the economy and identity of the region, which makes locally produced cheese a much better road-trip souvenir than another magnet for the refrigerator. A local cheese stop is a natural place for cheese, fresh curd and other regional products.

There's also the kind of oversized roadside photo opportunity that makes a family trip memorable. It's goofy, local and exactly what a good road trip needs.

From here, the day can go in two directions. Families looking for more adventure can head toward Whetstone Gulf for a walk and some dramatic fall scenery. Anyone who would rather keep eating their way through Lewis County can continue toward Croghan. There is no wrong answer.

A Detour Into Whetstone Gulf

Whetstone Gulf is where the road trip suddenly stops feeling like a drive through farm country. The state park surrounds a roughly three-mile gorge cut into the eastern edge of the Tug Hill Plateau, with forested trails and overlooks that become especially dramatic as the leaves change.

You don't need to turn this into an all-day hiking expedition. Depending on your family and the conditions, this can simply be a chance to get everybody out of the car, walk for a while, breathe some cool air and take the photograph that eventually ends up framed in the house.

It also gives the day some contrast. A couple of hours earlier you were drinking coffee in Watertown. Now you're standing above a gorge surrounded by fall color, and you still haven't traveled particularly far from home.

Croghan: Coffee, Community and Something for the Cooler

By the time you reach Croghan, the trip should feel different than it did when you left Watertown. Maybe somebody's shoes are muddy from Whetstone, there are already a few local purchases rolling around in the back of the car, and the kids have started comparing photographs.

This is another place where I wouldn't simply drive through. Find a locally owned café or restaurant, sit down, order something, warm up if the day has turned chilly and actually spend a little time in Croghan. A business with a story of hospitality, community or faith can add another human layer to the trip instead of simply becoming a name on a list.

Then, before leaving town, get the cooler back out. Croghan's local food traditions give you a chance to take home something connected specifically to the place you just visited. That's one of the ideas behind this entire trip: don't just look at the North Country. Participate in it. Eat at the restaurant. Buy from the farm stand. Drink the locally roasted coffee. Take home the cheese and bologna. Every one of those stops turns a Saturday drive into a small investment in the communities you're exploring.

Then Stop Looking for Destinations

Late afternoon is when I'd stop trying to accomplish things. You've eaten. You've explored. There's local food in the cooler. Maybe you've hiked part of Whetstone, and there are enough pictures on everyone's phones to prove you actually spent the day together.

Now point the car toward Tug Hill. As you move away from the villages, houses become less frequent, forests close around the road and the trip becomes quieter. Depending on the route, cell service may become unreliable, which is why downloading your directions before heading deeper into Tug Hill is a good idea.

This is the part of the afternoon when the drive itself finally becomes the destination. Find a safe route through the region, take your time and pull over only where it's legal and safe when you find a view worth stopping for. Tug Hill contains miles of trails, public lands, rivers and waterfalls, but those can become adventures for another Saturday. Today, we're chasing the leaves.

Maybe We've Been Looking Too Far Away

It's easy to believe an adventure has to happen somewhere else. We see photographs of Vermont, the Adirondacks or little New England towns and imagine that experiencing fall properly requires a hotel reservation and several hours on the interstate.

Then you spend a Saturday like this. You leave Watertown, wander through Copenhagen, eat and explore around Lowville, drink coffee in Croghan, put locally made food in the cooler and finish the afternoon surrounded by the forests of Tug Hill. None of these communities is a secret. That's actually the point.

Sometimes familiarity keeps us from seeing what's right in front of us. A good local road trip isn't about discovering a place nobody else knows exists. It's about looking at familiar places differently, meeting some of the people behind them and remembering that an ordinary Saturday can become a family memory without traveling very far at all.

We want this route to grow through the people who actually live here. If there's a farm stand we should visit, a little restaurant everyone needs to know, an overlook your family loves, a hidden waterfall, a shop that's worth the detour or an entirely different fall drive your family has been taking for years, tell us about it. Maybe your road becomes our next road.

Take the Long Way Home

Eventually, you'll turn north again. By then the light will be lower, the car will probably be quieter and there may be a kid sleeping against the window. The coffee cups will be empty, somebody's shoes may be muddy and there will hopefully be cheese, maple syrup, Croghan Bologna or some other piece of Lewis County riding home in the cooler.

You didn't need plane tickets. You didn't need a hotel. You didn't need six months of planning. You just needed a free Saturday and a willingness to look at your own backyard a little differently.

This fall, leave Watertown and take the long way home.