Fri July 23: Pt Au Roche to Burton Island State Park mooring

In which The Gut almost digests us ...

The Vermonters we met on the wall in Whitehall had mentioned the Burton Island State Park, so that was our next stop.  Apparently it's a gem, known only to people in the northern part of VT.

It was just a short cruise across the lake to the Vermont side, but we had to go through a shallow area called “The Gut”.    You know I love to tease Rick when he worries about areas with 'scary' names.  In this case there really was a reason to worry.  We'd (by which I mean Rick) read The Gut had a troublesome amount of aquatic weeds - but we had  NO IDEA.  Apparently The Gut was a bovine stomach. It was a thick mass of floating seaweed, like driving through a bowl of heavy green mermaid hair.  The bottom was so choked with weeds the depth finder had a nervous breakdown, jumping around from 4' to 25'.

We could feel the propeller picking up the seaweed.  Eventually the boat was barely moving forward it was so bogged down in weeds.  In addition, we were concerned about what was being sucked up into the cooling systems.  I finally suggested we put the engine into reverse to see if it would loosen and remove the trapped seaweed; which worked like a charm!  (I like to be helpful about every 18 days or so)  We finally made it to the other side, under the drawbridge and out into the clean water of the lake again.  But we both have more grey hair.

It was such a relief to be leaving The Gut that we hardly flinched at the narrow bridge we had to go under.

 Lake Champlain is interesting in that it has a whole eastern side, referred to as the Inland Sea, but it can only be accessed by larger boats through this weed infested passage.   Strange that they haven’t figured out a way to harvest and/or remove some of this junk. 

Distances in this part of the lake are short-we were quickly picking up a mooring ball at Burton Island State Park.   I love this idea for a park - it is an island, and only accessible by boat.  You can come on your own boat - there is a nice marina with around 100 slips -  or you can come over on the ferry boat that runs about every two hours from the mainland just a short distance away.   The park has multiple campsites and “lean-to” type sleep platforms (kind of like a cabin with three walls and a roof. A good place to sleep if you don’t have a tent or the weather gets bad).  There are even paddle-up camp sites for those who canoe over with all their gear. There is also a well stocked small camp store and “Bistro” that sells breakfast and lunch.  

We planned to go ashore and hike tomorrow so we stayed on the boat for the afternoon.   Rick baked some banana bread as we had to salvage the overripe bananas.   

I had time to enjoy this fabulous dress, made entirely of duct tape!  Including duct tape shoes, earrings and a purse.  Love...

I also spent some time on ComedyWildlifePhoto.com.  Highly recommend - it's comedy gold!

There was a beautiful sunset and just as the last vestiges of the western sky were turning from a rose color to dark, the full moon started to rise over the eastern sky.  Given all the smoke in the air the moon was incredible as it rose up over the hills of Vermont.  Sorry our pix don't do it justice.