Sat July 17: North Basin Harbor to Burlington Boathouse Marina

 In which Rick wonders if he needs bigger….boat fenders ...

Ric here:

We didn't let the light rain (so what else is new) stop us, and after breakfast went to the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum.  This is a wonderful “working” museum that not only houses excellent displays on the history of the area (remember Fort Ticonderoga, French and Indian war and the Revolutionary war?  Excellent displays!), but also offers classes on all sorts of nautical and boat building trades.   They have blacksmith and metal working shops, a full boat restoration shop, sail making classes and classes on environmental issues surrounding Lake Champlain. 

Is bigger always better?

We arrived precisely at 10 am when the museum opened and spent the next 3 hours exploring.  They had a great display on prohibition - it turns out the the state of Vermont had it’s own prohibition law from about 1850 to the implementation of the 18th amendment in 1920, which created a national prohibition law.   It also turns out that the law was largely ignored - with plenty of alcohol coming in from New York and Canada.   The main “museum” type exhibition was on the history of Lake Champlain in the Revolutionary War.  I won’t go into detail (by which he means beat that dead horse even more), but I will once again mention the importance of this region, and the fascinating history that includes the creation of our Navy etc (omg - that poor horse).  The museum is charged with finding and cataloging all the underwater treasures in the lake and has established multiple scuba diving sites for exploration of sunken ships.  It was pretty impressive.

The museum also had comprehensive display and models of all kinds of small boats - skiffs, rowboats, dinghies, and small sailing boats as well as an extensive exhibit on iceboats.  It turns out that iceboats were once the fastest vehicles on earth, with one iceboat reaching a speed of 144 mph!   This was in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s! Imagine sitting on a piece of wood with a huge sail traveling at over 100 mph.  (no thank you)

 Mel's favorite part of the museum was getting a better understanding of the complex person Benedict Arnold was.  He might have gotten an unfair rap, and she does love an underdog.

A picture of Blue Horizon as we come back from the museum - we have not often seen our boat in front of HILLS!

Once finished at the museum we motored further north to Burlington, Vermont’s largest city.   We had visited here once a few years back when we were on a bike trip and looked forward to visiting again.   We arrived around 3 pm, tied up to the dock at the Burlington Community Boathouse (the city run marina) and immediately went off to find lunch. After lunch we took a short walk through the excellent pedestrian zone that was close by the marina (very much like the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder) and found it to be very crowded, filled with kids on summer vacation and vacationing families from all over.   Burlington feels very much like the Pacific Northwest, lots of hippies, yuppies, young families and lots of homeless people.   

We will have plenty of time to explore, since my dentist apt isn't until Monday mid-day. Mostly what we were looking for was the salty and the sweet!