Vaughan to Saratoga Springs: the racetrack summer by chauffeured car

Saratoga, the August town

Saratoga Springs has two seasons: the year, when it is a handsome town of mineral springs, Victorian porches, Skidmore College and a Broadway of restaurants; and the forty days from mid-July to Labor Day, when the Saratoga Race Course — the oldest thoroughbred track in the country, racing since 1863 — brings the sport's best horses, the Travers Stakes in late August and a town that doubles in population and price. Around the track are the reasons the rest of the year works: Saratoga Spa State Park's mineral springs and the Roosevelt Baths, where the carbonated water is still drawn for the tubs; the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in the park, where the New York City Ballet dances in July and the Philadelphia Orchestra plays in August; Broadway's downtown and the Adelphi Hotel's restored 1877 grandeur; the National Museum of Racing; Congress Park's springs and its carousel; and the Saratoga battlefield, where the Revolution turned in 1777, twenty minutes east. A Vaughan racing group of eight drives eight hours for a Saturday at the rail; a family drives seven and a half and sleeps here on the way to Boston. The Discover Saratoga site has the town; the border guide has the bridge.

The road

From Woodbridge the 401 east, Kingston, the Thousand Islands Bridge, I-81 south to Syracuse, I-90 east to Albany and I-87 north twenty minutes to exit 14 — eight hours by the estimate and eight and a quarter with the booth and a Kingston stop; the Lewiston bridge and the Thruway from Buffalo is the western alternative, about the same time, for a family that wants Rochester or Syracuse on the way. The Sprinter carries a racing group of eight; the SUV a family splitting the Boston drive.

The Race Course, in the meet

The track's forty days run from mid-July through Labor Day with racing Wednesday to Sunday — the grandstand and clubhouse of 1892 with the striped awnings, the backyard's picnic tables under the trees where families spread blankets and watch the paddock, the horses walked from the barns across Union Avenue through the crowd, the Travers Stakes on the fourth Saturday of August and the Whitney and the Alabama before it; general admission is bought at the gate or online, the clubhouse's reserved seats and the boxes are the NYRA site's advance sale, and a Vaughan group of eight books a box for the Travers in the spring. Breakfast at the track — the morning workouts watched from the clubhouse porch with coffee from six — is the racing family's ritual; the Oklahoma training track across Union Avenue is the barns' side.

The springs, the Spa Park and the baths

Saratoga's mineral springs made it — twenty-odd carbonated springs, each with its own taste, piped to fountains and pavilions across the town and the Spa Park: Congress Park's Congress and Columbian springs, the Hathorn on Spring Street, the State Seal and the Polaris in the park, the Geyser's Island Spouter — and the family's walk is a cup at each with the children rating them; the Roosevelt Baths & Spa in the Spa Park's 1935 bathhouse draws the naturally carbonated water for the mineral baths, the parents' hour, and the park's page has the springs' map. The park's pools — the Victoria Pool's Beaux-Arts complex and the Peerless Pool's slide — are the children's afternoon.

SPAC and the summer's stages

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center is the amphitheatre in the Spa Park's pines with a lawn behind it: the New York City Ballet's two weeks in July, the Philadelphia Orchestra's three in August, the Chamber Music Festival, the jazz festival in late June and the touring concerts' summer — a Vaughan family's evening is the ballet from the lawn with a picnic and the children asleep on the blanket, and the SPAC site has the season. Caffè Lena on Phila Street, the country's oldest continuously operating folk coffeehouse, where Bob Dylan played in 1961, is the other stage.

Broadway, the Adelphi and the food

Broadway's Victorian blocks are the town's evening — the Adelphi Hotel of 1877, restored, with its bar and its Morrissey's; Hattie's chicken on Phila Street since 1938; the Saratoga Chips, invented here in 1853, at Druthers; the Putnam Market; the Saturday farmers' market at High Rock Park; and the racing crowd's Siro's beside the track in August — and a family stays at the Adelphi, the Gideon Putnam in the Spa Park or the Saratoga Arms, which the travel desk holds; in the meet the town's rooms double and book by spring.

The battlefield, the museums and Skidmore

Saratoga National Historical Park at Stillwater, twenty minutes east, is the field where Burgoyne surrendered in October 1777 — the ten-mile tour road with its stops, the Neilson farm, the Boot Monument to the unnamed Benedict Arnold — and the Grade 7 student's morning; the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame across from the track has the trophies, the silks and the racing simulator; the Children's Museum at Saratoga on Caroline Street and the Saratoga Automobile Museum in the Spa Park are the rainy hours; Skidmore College's campus on the town's north edge is the university visit for a student with the liberal-arts list. The park's page has the battlefield's tour road.

The racing weekend, in shape

Friday at 8 from Woodbridge, Kingston at 11, the bridge at 12:15, the Thruway, the Adelphi by 4:30, Broadway's dinner and Caffè Lena; Saturday's breakfast at the track from 7, the backyard's tables from 11, the card from 1 with the Travers or the day's feature at 5:45, Siro's after; Sunday's Spa Park springs and the Roosevelt Baths, SPAC's afternoon or the battlefield, the Sprinter at 3, the Thruway, the bridge at 7:15 with the 48-hour exemption, Woodbridge by 11:15. Two nights, the Sprinter as a return with a Saturday on daily hire, one number in the booking engine, split eight ways.

What the chauffeur replaces

Eight hours each way as a driver; the bridge; the Thruway's and the Northway's hours; the track's lots on a Travers Saturday, where the Sprinter parks in the Union Avenue lot the chauffeur knows; the racing group's Saturday, which is not a driver's; and the Sunday drive home. For a couple the trip is a car's; for a racing group of eight or two families in a Sprinter it is one fare and nobody who had to stay sober at the rail.

Seasons

Mid-July to Labor Day for the meet, with the Travers weekend the fullest and dearest; July for the ballet and August for the orchestra at SPAC; June for the jazz festival and the town before the crowds; October for the battlefield's anniversary and the Spa Park's colour; winter for the Victorian Streetwalk in December and the Saratoga Winterfest's ice; the year's other months for the town at its own pace and the split night on the Boston road.

Pairing it

Saratoga pairs with Lake George forty minutes north for the lake week, with Boston three hours east as the drive's split, with Albany thirty minutes south for the capital's museum, and with Cooperstown ninety minutes west for a family that adds the Hall of Fame.

The Travers Saturday, in order, for a group of eight

Eight friends from Maple in the Sprinter: the clubhouse porch at 7 for the workouts and the breakfast with the trainers walking past; the backyard's reserved picnic table under the elms from 10:30 with the cooler from the bay and the paddock walk between races; the first race at 1:05; the Travers at 5:45 with the box's view of the stretch; Siro's tent after with the crowd from the track; the Sprinter at 8:30 to the Adelphi. The Travers box is bought in the spring, the Sprinter's parking pass for the Union Avenue lot with it, and the NYRA site has both; the group's fare divides eight ways and nobody drove from Siro's.

The split night for Boston

A family from Thornhill on the Boston road leaves at seven, does Kingston's lunch and the bridge, and is at the Gideon Putnam in the Spa Park by 3:30 — seven and a half hours — with the springs' walk before dinner, Hattie's chicken on Phila Street, and Broadway's evening; the morning is the Roosevelt Baths for one parent and the Children's Museum for the other before the SUV leaves at eleven for the Massachusetts Turnpike and Boston by 2:30. It is the night that makes the eleven-hour Boston drive two comfortable days, and the travel desk holds the Putnam.

Costs, plainly

The Saratoga racing weekend is a return with a Saturday on daily hire in the booking engine split eight ways; the box, the Adelphi and Siro's are the group's own, and the 48-hour exemption covers the racing museum's shop. As the Boston split it is one night inside the Boston return. Against the fare are eight hours each way as a driver, the bridge, the track's Travers-day lots and a Saturday at the rail that is not a driver's; a couple does it in a car, and a racing group of eight or two families in a Sprinter book it for one fare.

Yaddo's gardens and the town's quiet corners

Yaddo, the artists' retreat on Union Avenue behind the track where Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath and Leonard Bernstein worked, keeps its formal rose garden and its rock garden open to the public — the walk between the track's afternoon and the town's evening — and the Saratoga Automobile Museum in the Spa Park's old bottling plant, the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore and the Congress Park carousel of 1910 are the town's other hours; the Yaddo site has the garden's hours, and the Sprinter's daily-hire Saturday threads them around the race card.

Booking it

Book a return from your Vaughan address with a Saturday on daily hire, or a daily hire for the weekend; tell us the race day, the box, the hotel, SPAC's evening, the seats and every passenger's citizenship for the bridge, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Book the Saratoga weekend