Natural sand at Cumberland Bay slopes into Lake Champlain inside Plattsburgh, and the campground is the pines behind that slope. You swim, walk back, and the lake is still in the windshield, Vermont on the far shore. On a warm afternoon the same strip fills with day users from town and people who slept in those pines.
South on Route 9, Ausable Point sticks out into Lake Champlain as a sand spit, with Valcour Island across the water. People here call that silhouette Battleship Island. From a site on the spit you watch it all day, and a paddle toward the island is how you get closer.
Cumberland Bay opens mid-May and runs through Columbus Day on ReserveAmerica, and Ausable Point keeps the same season, so book the site before the van. Point au Roche, up the northwest shore, is day-use only. A protected sandy beach and Deep Bay handle the paddle, with moorings in the bay if you have a boat, then you come back to Cumberland Bay or the spit to sleep.
The Grand Isle ferry rolls onto Vermont around the clock, a roll-on crossing of the same lake you slept on. Lake Champlain Ferries charges that crossing by vehicle length as of September 2026. From the other side, Burlington is the continuation of the same lake.
Ausable Chasm
Sandstone walls drop you below grade at Ausable Chasm, on stone walkways that run along the river for hundreds of feet. The rock is close enough that the walk feels like a hallway with a river in it. A raft or a tube takes you past Rainbow Falls and Elephant's Head. It is a private attraction, and it has its own campground, with full hookups and pull-through sites.
The campground is south of Plattsburgh on Route 9 and runs mid-May through mid-October. Book it as the night after the walkways and the float.
Taylor Pond and the northern Adirondacks
West of Champlain the public land turns into dirt roads, fire towers, and ponds. Taylor Pond is the dirt-road DEC campground, primitive, with no flush toilets, lean-tos, and boat-access interior sites on the water. It takes RVs up to 30 feet as of September 2026, and it closes by early September. If you need more length or sleeping space, look at New York RV rentals.
Near Schuyler Falls, Macomb Reservation State Park has wooded campsites on the Salmon River and Davis Pond, some with electric. It closes by early September too.
Lyon Mountain still carries a 1917 fire observation tower, trailhead off Lowenburg Road. On a clear day Montreal's skyline is in the view. Chazy Lake is the paddle next to that hike. Poke-O-Moonshine's restored tower is the Route 9 day, a 360-degree look from the summit, then back to the lake or the pond to sleep.
Lake Placid and the High Peaks are the Adirondack Mountains trip. Montreal is a day north with a passport, through Montreal. Malone and Ticonderoga are the other towns on the way through.