The places that don't make you apologize for the kids. Restaurants with crayons that aren't an afterthought, parks with shade and bathrooms, the ice-cream stop with the line on a hot Tuesday.
Pizza-and-wings spot in Brier Hill, near enough to Jacques Cartier State Park to catch the after-beach crowd. Kathy and Pete Hunter make the dough from scratch every morning; the attached garage was Brier Hill's first schoolhouse, built in 1822, which is the kind of detail that comes up if you ask. Order the wings alongside the pizza — that's what regulars actually order.
State park on the St. Lawrence River two miles south of Morristown — 461 acres with a swimming beach, a boat launch, and a campground running tent and trailer sites through the season. This is where Black Lake renters actually go for river swimming, since the lake itself has no public beach. Twenty minutes from Hammond, worth the drive on a hot afternoon.
The world's largest collection of Frederic Remington's paintings, sketches, and sculpture, housed in the 1810 Parish Mansion in Ogdensburg — a serious art stop about 25 minutes from the lake, open weekdays only. A separate children's wing runs western-themed activities, which makes it a workable rainy-day plan for a family that's exhausted the fishing-and-cards routine at the cottage.