Weekend of July 15-17

We moved over to Burlington for the weekend. we found a little park on Mallets Bay, part of Lake Champlain. We've got lots of things to  do and see here, from a few factory tours, to museums.
We'll stay until we hit the ones that interest us most.
We started off with a walk down by the bay in the evening on Friday, (while our laundry was in the machines), Very pleasant, nice breeze, beautiful boats.

On Saturday we went to Burlington's aquarium, and ecology center, ECHO. It is the Glass window structure in the center. This is a  nicely done aquarium, showing marine animals from Lake Champlain. Here we began to hear the story of Lake Champlain and the crucial part the battles during 1776-7 played in our country's independence. ECHO had a beautiful little cafe, and we took our lunch out on the patio on the waterfront. The weather was warm, but not unpleasant because of the breezes off the lake. We watched ferries and tour boats come in and out.

After we left ECHO, we went across to a ship the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum recreated, the Lois McClure. She is a sailing canal Schooner, described as a 19th century "18 wheeler". These were flat bottomed narrow boats made to be loaded with coal, marble granite, timber, or what ever needed to be transported.
. They were operated by individuals or sometimmes families.

Here is the area in the stern below deck, where a family would live. There were two additional bunks in the bow. This boat was built by the museum as a floating exhibit and it spends some time here in Burlington, and also down at their headquarters in Vergnennes VT

On Sunday we went back to this area, and boarded the Northern Lights, kind of a recreation of an old steamboat that used to work the lake carrying passengers and freight . This was a combination lunch cruise, and before we left dock we began to hear from a local history teacher who would be our tour guide. He was very good at telling the history of Lake Chaplain region. When he got to the story about Benedict Arnold and the fall of 1776 you could tell this was where his interest lie. He described the lakes importance, the struggles both the colonists and the British had in equipping themselves with ships, and especially the importance of Arnold.
Up here in Lake Champlain country, they recognize that Arnold did not finish his military career with glory, having changed sides. But they recognize the battles he won and his courage in technique. Like Bennington, where we just were, people here believe this is the place where the colonists fought the crucial battle that set the new nation up for the big win in Saratoga the following Spring.
The cruise took us by some of the geology of this region and  our history teacher guide turned into a more than adequate Geology teacher. He described the collision between the two continental plates that formed the Adirondack mountains to our west, the lake we were on, and the Green mountains to our east.

This is really quite a geologists dream landscape, because  of the difference you can see in the rock, representing completely different formation, time,and distance traveled. The display we saw the day before in the museum highlighted how the land around the lake was once much lower, allowing it to actually become a part of the Atlantic oceean. They actually have skeletons of Beluga whales that were recovered from this area. when the glacier melted, the land "bounced back" and the lake then became freahwater.

Just outside the breakwater, we were told about a canal schooner the General Butler, that sank, and that is now an interesting dive site. It is the yellow buoy. This lake, while not as large as any of the great lakes has an equal potential for disaster for captains. Storms can develop from the west, and a boat can become in trouble very fast. This happened to the schooner, and the captain headed for Burlington. As he neared it, he ran ground. Then the waves came crashing around the boat raising it up, then bringing it down on the breakwater, repeatedly. He managed to get everybody off, but then they were all huddled on the rocks, in near freezing weather. The harbormaster, seeing all  of this, got in a life boat and rowed out and rescued them.

One last highlight from the cruise, this Coast Guard station. Because Lake Champlain is mostly pleasure boating today, the coast guard has little to do in the off season. Thus this stations designation, "Vacation Station"