By Steve Bergsman

As a winter traveler, I usually end up in a major ski location, in places well-known for outdoor sports or indoor sybaritic night life in picturesque locations such as Lake Tahoe, Banff, Jackson Hole or Telluride.

For something completely different, my wife and I decided we would depart the grandeur, in this particular instance the Olympic town of Lake Placid, New York, and head deep into the rural Adirondack Park world to the hamlet of Inlet, for its own little festival called Frozen Fire and Lights.

The Adirondacks in upstate New York is no small park. To the contrary, it is a huge land mass, bigger than Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon national parks. About the size of the state of Vermont, the Adirondack Park contains 85 percent of all the wilderness east of the Mississippi River. In the middle of it all sits the town of Inlet, which is known to Easterners because it is usually singled out by the Weather Channel for having the coldest temperature in New York on any given winter day.

Indeed, on our first night in Inlet, we were sitting in the dining room of the historic Woods Inn having a splendid meal of Adirondack-style surf and turf (venison and trout), when who should walk in but a bearded fellow named Paul Chambers, who the next day was going to be crowned king of the festival.

Chambers, who had helped found the festival, liked to drink nonalcoholic beer and tell stories. He regaled my wife and me with festival tales such as the time a few years back when the temperature dipped to 27 below zero and the propane lines froze so they couldn't cook the hotdogs, which were specially imported from Rochester, New York, and were local favorites. A disaster, he said, although he laughed heartily at the memory of it all.

The stories that he most preferred to tell were about snowmobiling adventures or misadventures — and he wasn't unique in that regard. Everyone in and around Inlet loved to tell snowmobiling stories, which was the next best thing to actually snowmobiling, the most popular activity in town. Everyone seemed to snowmobile and one really had to be careful driving through the one-intersection town because snowmobilers crisscrossed the streets with frequency and recklessness.

Just up the road from Inlet sits the town of Old Forge, which, according to the local newspaper, is the Snowmobile Capital of the East. Inlet and Old Forge and most of the other nearby towns sit on the edges of lakes, not an unusual phenomenon as there are 3,000 lakes and ponds in the Adirondacks and all are frozen over in the winter, as are the 2,000 miles of trails. This makes for the perfect snowmobiling environment. Enthusiasts can snowmobile over frozen lakes or on wickedly beautiful trails through thick forests.

George Frey, the owner of the Woods Inn, volunteered to take me on a snowmobile jaunt one afternoon. I hadn't snowmobiled but once in the past 10 years. That time, above the Arctic Circle in the dead of winter, I planted my snowmobile into bush and it had to be dragged out.

Frey was cautious and tested me on frozen Fourth Lake before we were to make our journey. OK, no problem, I got the hang of it. But then he decided we needed to fill up the tanks with gas — except the nearest filling-stop was closed so we had to travel along the shoulder of a main road to get to a gas station, where I then had to drive the snowmobile across the blacktop to park it in front of the gas pumps. I didn't realize snowmobiles are hard to steer on non-snowy pavement.

Somehow I managed to survive running the snowmobile through a civilized world. Nevertheless, I was extremely thankful to finally hit the forest trails, where one can appreciate the real joys of snowmobiling.

Obviously, I was just a dilettante, but everyone else from Old Forge to Inlet and everywhere in between rode snowmobiles as a part of life. At 9 p.m., I drove past a popular pizza place and bar that was surrounded not by cars, but by snowmobiles. At the Woods Inn, where we ate dinner, the lounge was filled with snowmobilers. The windows of the dining room looked out over the lake, and I could see the headlights of more snowmobiles coming to the shore through the whole meal.

Many bars in the Adirondacks don't officially close until 2 a.m., so it's not uncommon to see snowmobilers commuting home in the wee hours of the morning, subzero temperatures notwithstanding. If that sounds dangerous, it is. Too many snowmobilers drink and drive.

A front-page story in the local newspaper one day was about a snowmobiler who died after having driven his vehicle into a tree. The time of the incident was well past 2 in the morning, so it was easy to guess what happened.

These are remote incidents, however, and thousands of people come to the Old Forge-Inlet area to snowmobile every winter. To encourage it all, the week I was there New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed the area to waive the registration requirements for out-of-state snowmobilers. The local paper showed a photograph of the governor and his daughter snowmobiling in the area.

The waiver ploy must have worked because at the homey bed and breakfast where my wife and I were staying a couple from Massachusetts had come to snowmobile. They timed their journey to also visit the Frozen Fire and Lights Festival, which, among other fun activities, held a kid's snowmobile race.

That was to be followed by happy hour at the Woods Inn and then the famous Inlet bonfire, the great frankfurter cookout and finally fireworks, which, of course, could be viewed from your snowmobile, wherever you had it parked.

WHEN YOU GO

My wife and I stayed at the cozy Adirondack Fairway Bed and Breakfast, where Bruce and Margie O'Hara are wonderful hosts: www.adirondackfairwaybedandbreakfast.com.

Charlie Frey recently acquired and restored the historic Woods Inn, where every room is different and every room a charmer: www.thewoodsinn.com.

We had a great meal at the Woods Inn, which also has a very popular bar and lounge in the basement called the Laughing Loons Tavern: www.thewoodsinn.com.

A little bit out of town, we also had a very good meal at the Seventh Lake House, where Chris and Jim Holt serve American contemporary cuisine: www.seventhlakehouse.com.

We also ate a hearty lunch at the Tamarack Cafe in downtown Inlet, which is about a block in length. They service basic diner food done well: 315-357-2001.

Much fun and small-town pleasures are to be had at the Fire and Lights Festival. Highlights include a Cardboard Sled Race and fireworks. The 2016 event will be on Feb. 27: www.inletny.com.

Steve Bergsman is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.