This map is offered to everyone who stays at Silver Bay. It's bigger than this, but here you see the main buildings.

Blue buildings are the common areas where we will have most of our activities.

Yellow buildings are for guest housing. Gray buildings are YMCA staff housing.

Orange buildings are cottages.

The Inn

When you first arrive at Silver Bay, you will be drawn to the Inn, which is the main building. That is where you check-in, no matter where you are sleeping.

The Inn is an old beautiful building, built in 1900. There is a lobby area along one side and the front filled with comfortable chairs. On the outside there is a deep porch filled with rocking chairs. When we were there, there was a wedding in the Inn.

There are no common areas on the upper floors. We are staying on the first floor and are hoping our baby monitor will reach to the lobby so we can have adult time after our little guys go to sleep!

The Auditorium

On each side of the Inn are two large buildings: the auditorium and the dining hall. The auditorium is like a movie theater with individual wooden seats attached to the floor.

The Dining Hall

The dining hall is on the other side of the Inn.

When we were there, food was in buffet-style warmers down the center of the dining hall. The choices were yummy and kid-friendly. There were vegetarian options at each meal.

At most meals we noticed tables with bread, peanut butter and jam - a big help for parents of fussy eaters.

In a small room were beverages, including juice and soda machines. 

YMCA staff pick up your plates when you are done. As parents of toddlers, who frequently get up from the table to give chase, we had to keep an adult at the table to guard the plates.

We also had a special meal at the campfire ring. We made fajitas, quesadillas, corn, baked potatoes, s'mores and banana boats... on the fire. It was the first time we had Mexican food over a fire.

The Silver Bay staff put out a plentiful spread in the middle of the woods and lead a rousing campfire sing-along. Silver Bay staff call themselves "emps," short of employeees, and they come from all over the world.

At the dining hall, we saw a bulletin board about how Silver Bay is going green. They have a composter! There are recycling boxes every where.

Where You Sleep

Most of us will be in the larger residences - The Inn and Bayview.

Rooms at the Inn

We did not stay at the Inn during our October visit, but a front desk staff person showed me the room we reserved for the Summit. The beds were not made in the photos because no one had booked the room. Our only concern is whether people upstairs will be loud. The building is built in 1900 and doesn't have the most sophisticated sound-proofing. We hope everyone agrees on a relatively early quiet time to accommodate families with smaller children.

Here's a photo inside the Inn of my son climbing the stairs. There is an elevator but it's rather small.

Here's a photo of the gift shop in the Inn. It has mostly crafts but some handy things if you forget items.

Rooms at Bayview

During our October visit, we stayed in Bayview. On the map, it looks far from the dining hall and the Inn, but we found it was not a problem even with little children. It's about a five minute walk - mostly flat with a small hill at the end.

We really liked Bayview because they gave us HUGE rooms on the bottom floor. I think during the Summit these would be reserved for larger families because they can accommodate more than four people. But since we were there during the off-season, we got to stay there.

Another nice thing about Bayview is that it has internet access.

The soundproofing was not good. We heard our neighbor's kids and the people upstairs in the bath. But one nice feature for parents of young children is the huge common room on the bottom floor of Bayview. Our baby monitor easily reached it. There was a full kitchen including fridge, as well as a piano which our kids LOVED to play. (Thank goodness the place was almost empty!)

Other Places to Stay

The full list of places to stay is on the Silver Bay website at http://www.silverbay.org/page5823.asp.

Brookside Community House and Trinity House

These are the nicest places to stay at Silver Bay. Here's a photo of the common room which includes a full kitchen.

These two buildings appear to be the most recently built. They are beautiful, but also the most expensive and have few rooms.

Brookside has shared bathrooms, whereas Trinity has private baths.

Hepbron

We didn't go into the Hebron residence but it looks like a nice, older building. Each room accommodates two people, so if you are a single or couple, it's a nice option. Bathrooms are shared down the hall.

Hemlock 

This building looked like a old-style motel on the side of the highway. The doors to the rooms face outside, rather to an inner hallway. I think you go outside to go to the shared bathrooms.

Paine Hall

I see this listed on the Silver Bay website and on the map, but we totally missed looking at this residence. It is tucked away in the woods. I think it would be out of the way for Summiteers. But I might be wrong - it looks totally cute on the website!

Cottages

If you refer back to the map at the top of this page, you'll see small orange buildings. Those are cottages and they are in high demand. They are usually booked far in advance. They are in such high demand that Silver Bay awards them to people on a points system. You earn points by donating to their annual fund, volunteering at their clean-up events etc. If you are signed up for the Silver Bay e-newsletter, you saw in the December issue that they had just opened the "lottery" for the cottages. Each cottage has a minimum and maximum number of guests. For these many reasons, very few if any Summiteers will stay in the cottages. You can get more info about cottages at the Silver Bay website, http://www.silverbay.org/page5480.asp

Meal plans are optional for people in cottages, but not other buildings. Only children age 6 and up count toward the head count. You have to rent cottages for the full week (Saturday to Saturday).

Elm cottage

These photos were taken through windows and show a sample cottage kitchen and bedroom.

Crafts at Silver Bay

The craft building was closed when we visited, but it looks like it's going to be amazing during the Family Nature Summit! We saw signs for beading, knitting, leatherwork, paper making, pottery, silver work, stained glass and weaving. It seems like you sign up for the crafts when you get to Silver Bay, rather than before, and you pay for materials as you use them. Each station is decorated with a sign, for example:

Stained glass

Boat House and Collins Equipment Center

There is an impressive boat house on Lake George very close to the Inn. It's a three level building:

• top level - on the same level as the Inn - contains an equipment room filled with games and sports equipment
• second level - conference room with wrap-around porch overlooking the water (wheelchair and stroller accessible)
• bottom level - canoe, kayak, life jacket and paddle storage area at the water's surface

They have a speed boat called the Silver Spray which Silver Bay staff use to take people on tours of Lake George for a fee. We didn't try this during our October visit, but I heard it was fun from other board members.

One highlight of our October visit was taking the kids in a canoe on Lake George. We had tried canoeing with our son a year before, and he screamed his head off because he didn't like the feeling of the lifejacket up around his face. This time he was bigger and Silver Bay had tiny lifejackets for even very small kids, so he loved it. Our daughter liked her comfortable special seat in the middle of the canoe.

They gave him a tiny little paddle so he could paddle with us!

The grounds between the Inn and the boat house are filled with outdoor sports activities. There is a room filled with board games, tennis rackets, basketballs, shuffleboard poles and discs, horse shoes, bocce ball, frisbees, puzzles, volleyballs, soccer balls etc. During the summer, they also have archery and there is a nice, lifeguard patrolled beach (called Bay Beach) right at Silver Bay YMCA with a floating dock.

Our kids loved the large assortment of board games, although many were missing pieces. They made up their own games with pieces that were left.

This view from Bayview towards the boat house shows some of the outdoor sports offerings: handball, beach volleyball, basketball and tennis. All the equipment can be signed out for free.

Gymnasium

Fisher Gymnasium is a huge building at the far end of the Silver Bay campus. It contains two huge full size gyms with hardwood floors, a 24 foot climbing wall, a dance / yoga studio, a work out room and changing rooms. Most of the services were free except the climbing wall which cost $8 per two-hour session. Each week, Silver Bay puts out a newsletter called The Breeze which lists classes, hikes and trips on the Silver Spray speed boat.

Dance and yoga studio

Climbing wall

Halls and Pavilions

On the map, the blue buildings that I haven't mentioned are rooms where we can have classes. Many have wonderful views of Lake George. There is a beautiful chapel that has services for Silver Bay YMCA visitors and people in the nearby community. It has a lovely garden that our daughter said was where the fairies live.

Other Resources

In many rooms around Silver Bay we found a free magazine with LOTS of information about the local area called the Lake George Guide. It was an invaluable resource if you plan on staying in the Lake George area before or after Summit. It's kind of like a phone book / coupon book / local newspaper. It comes out quarterly.

When our daughter cut her chin open, our first concern was - where is the closest medical help? During the summer, there is a small nurse's station open in the Inn, but it is closed in the fall, so we needed to find an urgent care center or hospital. The closest facilities were in Ticonderoga, which the locals call "Ti." This appears to be the largest town nearby Silver Bay YMCA. There was a group of urgent care facilities under the company of Hudson Headwaters Health Network. They had 11 urgent care facilities within an hour of Silver Bay, and one dental emergency place. Unfortunately, none were open on Sundays, so the closest hospital was the Moses Ludington Hospital, 1019 Wicker Street, Ticonderoga - 518-585-2831.

 If reading this tour triggers questions in your mind, be sure to send questions to either Silver Bay YMCA at conference@silverbay.org or to the Family Nature Summits at info@familysummits.org.