NE Trip 2016
Day 3- Tuesday Aug 30 2016

Today was our second day in Burlington.  We slept late, not hitting breakfast till after 10:00.  We just went through the lobby of the hotel to Trader Dukes - the hotel's restaurant.  Not a bad breakfast.
We decided to see the Shelburne Museum today.  Just 15 minutes or so down the road.  Some very rich woman named Webb, whose mother-in-law was a Vanderbilt, founded the museum - mid 1950's I think.  It's not a building or two.  Or three.  It's over 100 acres about 10 miles outside Burlington, that is home to many buildings and exhibition halls.  Those buildings hold art and artifacts from many periods in American history, some directly related to the area surrounding Burlington.  We saw paintings by Grandma Moses, an exhibition of Circus Posters dating back to the 1800's, a couple of houses, one originally built in 1773 and the other in the early 1800s, an exhibit of 3-D quilts made by a Canadian Artist in the last 10 years, an actual steamboat that carried passengers on Lake Champlain that was moved from the Lake to the museum (during the winter when the ground was hard enough to support its massive 892 ton weight), among other interesting things. 

Super Hero

Circus Poster

Ticonderoga Steamboat

The houses, by the way, were moved from their original locations to the museum.   Parts of the houses were left intact, some were modified to fit the ideal of the owners of the museum.  Not exactly
historical, but still pretty cool.  Another interesting thing was the General Store.  A one stop shop for your mid 1800s shopper - including an apothecary, dentist office, barbershop and surgery center. 

Leeches - Modern Medicine!

We kept running into what we surmised to be a married gay couple.  Originally from the LA area, they sold their house there for "7 figures" then retired to a bigger house in southern Vermont.  A couple of nice guys.




We left there about 5:00 PM and went to the place we parked our car the night before.  We did a sunset dinner cruise around the lake.  BBQ chicken, roast beef and a ton of carb-laden foods.  It was about as well as could be expected food-wise.  Still, about 2 1/2 hours going west to the NY coast of Lake Champlain, then south, then west and back north to Burlington.  A lot of people onboard. employees from some corporate company, a ton of Russian exchange students and a crew of mostly other foreign students working there for the summer - hoping to travel a little in the US before gong home.  Our waiter was Valentin from Romania.  Nice kid.  I hope we tipped him enough.

Got back to Burlington about 9:00 PM.  A little drama at the hotel.  Neither of our card keys worked to open the side door we were using.  Some fellow travelers had to get in using that door, so they let us enter with them.  Then we discovered our cards didn't work for our rooms either!  A quick trip to the desk.  They had us down for another night, but apparently the key system doesn't talk to the reservation system.  The key system only had us for one night.  Easily remedied. 

Tomorrow - TBD.  But we do have a reservation for dinner at the North Hero Inn at 6:00 PM and then going directly to Montreal!  Woo Hoo!