Pine needles cushion your tent here. Delta Lake State Park sits on a peninsula jutting out into a massive, blue reservoir just outside Rome, New York, where the shoreline stretches on for miles. You get a real sandy beach. Most parks in upstate New York force you to hike through dense brush to glimpse any water, but here, you just launch your kayak right off the grassy banks or back your trailer down the wide paved ramp. No fuss. Anglers pull trophy-sized northern pike and smallmouth bass out of these deep waters all summer.

Book one of the 101 campsites if you want to fall asleep to the sound of water lapping against the shore. Some spots even have electricity. When the summer heat fades, the crowds thin out, though the park stays busy as cross-country skiers take over the wooded trails once the snow dumps a thick white blanket over Oneida County. It gets freezing. But hot coffee by a morning campfire solves that pretty quickly.

Water covers a whole town here. Back in the 1800s, a bustling canal village stood on this exact dry ground, filled with wood-frame homes, a tavern, a post office, and a busy grist mill. Farmers tilled the rich soil along the Mohawk River. Then, around 1908, state engineers decided they needed a massive reservoir to feed the expanding Barge Canal. The state bought everyone out. They used eminent domain to acquire the land, forcing families to pack up their lives and even dig up graves from the local cemetery. By 1912, rising waters swallowed the remaining structures. Gone in a flash.

The village vanished beneath the waves. Decades later, in 1962, conservationists opened the surrounding shoreline as a public recreation area, turning the old farmland and woods into campsites and a sandy beach. Look closely during dry summers. When the water levels drop low enough, you can actually spot the eerie, silt-covered foundations of old stone walls and bridge abutments poking through the surface. The massive 1,000-foot-long concrete dam still looms nearby, holding back trillions of gallons of water. History sits right under the swimmers.