Lake George at Dusk

10" x 8" Acrylic on Gessoed Hardboard, $80, available for sale here

Silver Bay, NY is hands down my favorite place on this planet. (I haven't made it to Italy yet, so I guess this could change). This painting was done from a photograph I took looking south from Slim Point.

A little bit about this place I keep talking about: Technically, it's a YMCA conference center, but to me, it's a family vacation spot much like Dirty Dancing (or The Shining if you are there in the winter). Families return summer after summer to relax and enjoy the simple things in life. There is no cable, internet is hard to come by, and if you really need to use your cell phone, you either canoe out to the middle of the lake, drive 15 miles south, or huddle near the flagpole in the center of campus and hope for the best.* Evenings are spent catching a show at the auditorium and socializing over ice cream at The Store, and if you're feeling really wild, you'll head down to the beach or to the dock to watch the waves in the moonlight.

My grandmother, Barbara, started the Scott family tradition when she worked at Silver Bay as a teen. Eventually she and my grandfather, George, purchased a small cottage just off the main campus. Later, my father and his siblings spent their summers there, and now it's my generation's turn. There have only been a few summers I couldn't visit (damn you Kinko's for not giving me time off in the summer of '99!), but I made up for lost time by being an "Emp" (employee) three summers during college. As an Emp, you get paid well below minimum wage, are fed semi-tolerable food (we loved sandwich bar day!), and you live in condemnable dorms that smell like mold more often than not, but the work you do, the people you meet, and the place you are living more than makes up for it. Some people I worked with for only 7 weeks nine years ago are still my good friends; I'm going to one fellow Emp's wedding in just a few weeks.

You get the idea, I heart Silver Bay. I have my tickets to go back in July to introduce the place to My Biggest Fan, Jason. I sure hope he likes it as much as I do.

*it's possible that cell phone coverage has improved since my last visit in 2007, and I secretly hope it hasn't.