A mere $850-$1,300 per night

Author: By Julie Hatfield and Timothy Leland, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, November 9, 1997

Page: N1

Section: Travel

It has to be the most expensive, as well. Rooms run between a whopping $825 and an eye-popping $1,300 per night for two.

Under normal circumstances, there was no way we could justify the expense of staying there -- best small hotel in America or not.

But hey, this wasn't a normal circumstance, right? How often do you celebrate a 60th birthday?

``You deserve the very best,'' the young wife declared, affectionately, to her aging husband. ``Besides,'' she assured him, ``we've got one of the cheaper rooms.''

So off we went, driving six hours from Boston to The Point, the former Adirondack camp of William Avery Rockefeller, great-nephew of John D. Rockefeller.

Well, put it this way: He may have referred to it as a ``camp,'' but it's like no camp you've ever seen. Trust us.

This was one of the so-called ``Great Camps'' built between the turn of the century and the Depression by the fabulously rich -- the industrialists, financiers, and railroad magnates of the Industrial Age.

They were camps in the same way the Newport mansions are cottages.

Rockefeller could well afford it -- and also the four servants per person he employed when he vacationed there with friends and family.

He didn't limit his vacations just to summer, either. Rockefeller intended this place for all seasons. And for all time, apparently. He constructed the nine buildings on the 10-acre site on Saranac Lake out of massive stones, logs, and slate that look impervious to the ravages of nature.

Today this former vacation home in upstate New York is a rare gem of a resort, a 22-guest hotel that is part of the world-class Relais & Chateaux group, a place of unparalleled elegance and hospitality.

The latter prevails from the moment of arrival, in the person of manager Tim Thuell, a transplanted Englishman with a wonderful manner and a warm laugh. He met us at the door and showed us to our room -- Rockefeller's former library, as it turned out.

Like all the rooms at The Point, ours came with a huge feather bed and a working fireplace, which was ``working'' when we entered. You know you've come to a special hotel when you walk into your room on a brisk autumn day and find a fire blazing merrily away in an open fireplace beside your bed.

``We only have one policy here,'' noted Thuell, as he took us on a quick tour of the premises, ending at the large boathouse with its assortment of museum-quality motor craft -- ``and that's our `yes' policy.''

Say what?

``Our staff is directed never to say `no' to our guests,'' he explained. ``Whenever anyone asks if they can have something or do something special, we always say `yes.' ''

The Point was built for guests to enjoy house parties in the woods with every conceivable resort toy at their disposal. While staying there, Rockefeller's aim was to fulfill his family and friends' every whim, and that's the guiding philosophy of The Point today.

Thuell politely reminded us that the dress code for dinner that evening was black tie, urged us to save the cocktail hour for a cruise aboard the hotel's beautiful Victorian-style fantail launch, and graciously departed, leaving us on our own.

When you're paying for a stay at The Point, every moment seems precious (and it is), so we planned our time carefully. The good news is that the price includes everything -- from the three 24-hour open bars, to the gourmet meals and the afternoon teas, to the use of the sports equipment and facilities.

(By the way, you can book the whole inn, should you desire, at the bargain price of only $11,000 per night, and, believe it or not, The Point is booked every New Year's Eve until the year 2002.)

Eating and drinking (whether celebrating New Year's or not), turns out to be one of the major pastimes at The Point, and we certainly did our share of both.

We lunched that day at one of the two beautifully appointed dining tables in the great hall, a massive two-story central room filled with comfortable couches, funky wood-carved furniture and animal trophies all around the walls. Then we had just enough time that afternoon for a round of golf at the nearby Saranac Inn before returning to change into our formal attire and heading to the launch for cocktails on the lake.

Shortly thereafter, sitting in the heated, mahogany-and-glass enclosed cabin, we sipped our martinis and bellinis as the sun set behind the foliage-tinged ridges in the distance. Thuell guided the quiet electric boat across the lake's glassy surface to where he had previously seen a family of beavers working on their lakeside dam. As if on cue, one of them popped his head out of the water and swam in front of the boat.

``There's nothing we can't arrange at The Point,'' said Thuell in his clipped British accent.

That evening, the aging husband's birthday dinner was a prodigious seven courses long, served by candlelight in the great hall.

Prepared by a 26-year-old chef virtuoso who trained at Le Gavroche in London, it began with a galantine of duck with orange chutney, and proceeded to a second appetizer of red snapper in a giant ravioli, served with saffron cream sauce. From there it progressed to a fresh lobster salad, and then, after pausing over a melon port sorbet, moved on to an entree of venison and pigeon in juniper jus. After a sixth course of artisanal, cave-ripened cheeses, it finished, at last, with a strawberry/cake/whipped cream and chocolate confection.

A salutation in chocolate cursive was written on the husband's dessert plate, marking his 60th birthday with the quiet discretion that this traumatic event requires. Happily, he was the only one who could see it, giving reason to hope that the other guests at the table all thought he was still in his mid-50s.

When it was over, glowing from the Chablis Vaillons Premier Cru 1995 and the Chateau Leoville Poy Ferre Saint Julien 1991 that were served with the meal, the aging husband slowly got up from the table and tottered over to the fireplace to smoke a birthday cigar, passing up the sideboard laden with cordials and petit fours.

Normally, the hotel's 22 guests sit together for dinner ``en famille,'' and, given the interesting people who tend to stay at The Point, there's never a shortage of conversation at these elegant meals. Occasionally, however, some of the guests prefer more privacy, and will ask to be served dinner in their rooms, where -- dressed in black tie -- they sit before their bedroom fireplaces and savor each of the seven courses as they are brought to the room, one at a time, by the staff.

The next morning we decided to have breakfast in our own room, and ordered a ``sampler,'' which means a taste of everything they serve in the morning. We assumed a taste meant a taste, but we were in for a shock.

At 7:30 a.m., as we had requested, we were awakened by a gentle knock at the door (which is always left unlocked at The Point) and two staff members tiptoed in, loaded down with three trays. Our breakfast, laid out in pretty Vermont pottery, consisted of fresh-squeezed orange juice, coffee, cut-up fresh fruit with fresh mint, French toast and pancakes with warm maple syrup, fresh baked chocolate croissants, waffles, bacon, sausage, broiled tomatoes in sauteed mushrooms, homemade hash, scrambled eggs, shoestring potato pancakes, marmalade and raspberry jam, and freshly baked bread.

Trying to fit as many of the activities offered at this blissful hideaway into our short stay, we went down to the boathouse that morning for a ride in the $90,000 Hacker Craft mahogany speedboat, a replica of a 1929 classic, named The Point of It All.

At 40 miles per hour, we were given a dramatic tour of some of the other great camps on the lake, as well as of Chapel Island, the tiny rock outcropping in the middle of the lake with its nondenominational church built by the Saranac Lake residents.

Then, instructing the staff to make up a picnic for us, we worked off some of the breakfast with an 8-mile ride around a nearby lake on The Point's state-of-the-art mountain bikes. Returning to the hotel, we decided to have our picnic sandwiches in front of the fire in our room, and asked that they be brought up there.

Shortly thereafter came the familiar knock at the door and we watched in mock horror as the two-person kitchen team that had brought our breakfast lumbered into the room with more food than we could eat in a week of picnics: sub-sized salmon sandwiches, salads of roast squab, marinated roasted vegetables, potato chips, a full bottle of Chardonnay, six bottles of Adirondack mountain water, an assortment of cheeses and crackers, fresh fruit, two ramekins of creme brulee, chocolate chip cookies and . . . well, you get the idea.

It is no wonder that The Point's epicurean meals have been critically acclaimed in everything from Gourmet magazine to The Times of London.

After all these calories, we practically ran to nearby St. Regis Mountain to work them off on a brisk three-hour hike through the woods. Among other sights on the way to the summit, we passed the grand camp of the late Marjorie Merriwether Post.

Time and season didn't permit a game of croquet, or waterskiing, or ice skating on Saranac Lake, or a snow barbecue at the side of the lake, or snowshoeing, but these and many more activities, with all the necessary equipment, are all part of The Point experience. (Winter, incidentally, is one of the most popular times there.)

Did we find anything that displeased us at this amazing retreat? Yes: We wanted to take our speedboat ride at 9 a.m. but couldn't do it until 10 because, Rod, the licensed Hacker Craft driver, was busy taking guests to the Saranac Lake airport. Drat. That's what happens when you try to double up on help and don't keep four servants per guest, as Willy did. For 22 guests, The Point now keeps a staff of 35.

Other than that, it was quite restorative to live as Rockefellers for three days. We highly recommend the experience -- for celebratory occasions or just as a once-in-a-lifetime, incredibly pampering mini-vacation.

And isn't that, after all, The Point?