By Maryanne Mahoney

My summers are very different from those of the typical student at High School East. For starters, I have never gone to camp, which immediately sets me apart from probably more than half of the HSE students. My summer consists of hanging out with family and friends, sleeping late, and going on a few vacations here and there. For more than 30 years, my family has been traveling upstate to Lake George. I don’t know what a summer would be like without heading up to the lake. Very few events during the entire school year can top a week spent relaxing by the crystal clear lake, in the mountains, and under the stars. Below are some of the highlights from this year’s trip.

There is a hotel near the town that offers sailboat tours as part of your stay. My family stayed here when I was younger. I remember the countless sailboat rides; tour guides would tell us the entire history of the Lake and how the last of the Mohicans lived up in the Adirondack Mountains surrounding the Lake. I took this picture while cruising on a pontoon boat that my family rented for this year’s stay.

Many people at the Blue Lagoon Resort, which is where I stay, own their own boats. There are about 10-15 docking spaces for those boats. Dock number 7 is where we park our boat every year. The pontoon doesn’t go over 30 miles an hour, but it can fit the entire family. Nothing is better than cruising down the lake from Lake George village on the south end of the lake to Fort Ticonderoga at the northern tip.

I honestly can never take enough pictures of the lake. There is something so beautiful and majestic about the blue sky on the blue water, bordered by a crisp evergreen mountain range.  A jet ski is the perfect way to ride around the lake quickly while getting an awesome scenic view. Whether it’s 7am or 5pm, there are kids and adults alike riding around and having the most amazing time. There is something to be said about simplicity; the simplicity of the people we find and the activities we enjoy are captured perfectly by these images.

Playing around with my camera settings is always a must no matter what I am shooting. In this case, the lake, mountain range, and cloudy sky is blurred while in focus is the metal bar and the rope that attaches the tube to the back of the boat. The tube is a very sturdy float that someone can lay on and as the boat zooms ahead, offering an amazing, yet scary at times, adventure.