I guess this is part four of my Aliner Rally trilogy.  On the one full day that I had at the Aliner rally (I arrived Thursday and left Saturday), I decided to drive down Route 7 south of Burlington Vermont and visit the Shelburne Museum.  I used to live directly across Lake Champlain from Burlington in a little village called Port Kent.  It is the ferry landing point for the ferry that goes from Burlington to New York.  We used to come across on that ferry frequently on our bikes.  The cost back then was like $6.  Or we would take the slightly cheaper Essex Ferry across with the car and drive around Burlington to get groceries or go shopping or for medical appointments.  The doctors in Plattsburgh were not known to be very far advanced from the 1920s.  But anyway, we would drive past the Shelburne Museum and see the big circular barn and the waterwheel.  But we never did go in.  So this time I was determined that was one of the things I wanted to do while back in Burlington.  I had always heard that it had a very interesting exhibits and collections.  However nobody had ever told me how vast a collection it was or how long it would take to go through it.

When I first got to the museum the parking lot was empty.  Perhaps there were two dozen cars in a parking lot obviously capable of holding over 300.  However as I parked the car and took care of the boys, two school buses pulled up, which had me worried.  I soon found out, much to my relief, that the buses were there to pick up the children, not to drop them off.  So I started around to the various exhibits from the admissions and gift shop building.  The very first building was an extremely modern building that I went into and it was supposed to house some very expensive art and antiquities.  However it was closed due to them setting up new displays and exhibitions.  Later, back at the Aliner rally, while relating this, several said that this seems to be a common theme for this one building.  Several who live close enough to have been to the museum before said that they had on separate occasions been sent away without being able to look at the permanent collections in the building.  So I continued down the hill past the big mansion-house which did not look open so we skipped by that. But I did take a few pictures.  Then as we got down off the hill towards the flats we found so many things that were very interesting that we spent about an hour and a half just down there.

There is quite a lot of artwork around the grounds and sculptures and fountains and various statues in gardens.  But I kind of beelined to the structure with the waterwheel to see what was inside that.  I thought it was a grain mill, but soon found out it was a sawmill.  The kiosks and posters said that it had been built for the museum in 1951 as a replica of a Pioneer sawmill that might have been used around the early 1700’s.  And it had some good information about how they would saw logs into boards by hand.  One gentleman on top, one gentleman underneath, pulling a saw back and forth. Until somebody figured out how to do it with waterpower and someone could just  stand by watching the saw blade go up and down.  Sounds like it was probably much faster and easier.  I then walked around three or four other buildings that were labeled as Pioneer structures.  What really amazed me was the width of the boards these buildings were made of.  They were between 12 and 18 inches wide.  I don’t think you could get a board that wide today.  I was somewhat disappointed I didn’t see any farm animals around, as I thought they used to have those.  But it was early in the season so who knows, maybe they have them later in the summer.

I then walked the road running down the center of all the buildings in the lower area, not realizing you could go inside them.  I think the first one or two that I came to had ropes around them as they were under repair or something.  But anyways when I finally got to the barns it was obvious you could go inside.  The lower barns were very unique.  The one big barn was named the “Horseshoe barn”.  And because I approached it from the side I did not realize that it was shaped like a horseshoe.  I thought it was the barn they put the shoes on the horse.  (I only go to these things so I can feel really stupid).  Behind the horseshoe barn was the horseshoe barn annex, which was almost as big as the horseshoe barn.  The only difference I could tell was the horseshoe barn had two floors.  Both of these barns contained a huge collection of carriages, wagons, stage coaches, and sleighs.  And from looking at them I’m sure they were all authentic period pieces.  I wished I had thought to use my flashlight to get better pictures.  It was quite dark in both barns and I cruised through them fairly fast thinking that the video was not going to come out.  But it appears it’s not so bad, just fast.

And what I’ll call the bottom corner of the museum property, are several buildings that I’m not sure are of any special significance, but were filled with all sorts of collections.  There were dishes, and glass walking sticks, and goblets of crystal glass,  and animated toys, a whole toy exhibit of wagons and coaches and horses and things.  There was a large exhibit of quilts and weavings.  There was an extremely interesting loom on display showing an automated loom that ran somewhat like a player piano would work the piano keys. This loom had large “cards” with holes punched in them that would work the warp and the weave making very intricate patterns.  I found that so fascinating and it was also interesting that there was a lady there who knew how it worked in detail.

I then hiked up through the school-house to see that for a second.  I’m still wondering why there were no ink wells on the desks.  I was fascinated by the Stagecoach Inn that was full of cigar store Indians and other such wooden carvings.  I walked over to the stone house that’s right dead center in the lower part that I understand was relocated from miles away by dismantling it stone by stone.  I walked through the meeting-house and then decided that I probably should catch the shuttle to sit down for five minutes.  I could then get back to the top of the hill and work my  way back down rather than walk all the way up the hill.  Once I got back up to the top I went into the round barn.  Which of course, surprise, surprise, was full of more carriages and wagons.  The woman who started this museum collection must have had a big affinity for carriages because she has at least several hundred.  The circus building was one building I just did not give its due.  There was a trio of “thirtysomething” peoples in there and they were talking and jabbering and telling wild stories about their time  the worked for the circus.  But that was one long horseshoe-shaped building  full of just carousels “horses” and miniature circus figurines.  We skipped past the log cabins that were mostly paintings I was told.  I’m not a big painting admirer, unless I can take it home.  So I jumped over the earthen berm and got over to the railroad and the choo-choo.  I do like trains quite a bit.  I didn’t really spend enough time with the train because again it was all black and under a roof and I thought it was too dark to show up on the video.  I believe you could get up on the train and walk through it . Which I would have liked to do, but didn’t do.  I feel sad about that.  I’m going to have to go back.

And finally we were at approximately the three-hour mark.  I was beginning to wonder how I was going to put this into a video for YouTube without cutting it into three parts.  And we were looking at the Ticonderoga boat, which I was sure was going to take a lot of time to look at.  So again, I really shortchanged you on the tour of the boat.  Which for some reason had an exhibit of carriages on it.  Way too many carriages around the museum !  But the boat was fascinating and they have a video of how they got the boat to where it is.  I originally had thought they had just docked it there when Noah got the animals off it but I’m told that isn’t true.  From the boat we went to a couple of other buildings but I was getting pretty tired and I don’t believe I videoed much of it.  I figured I had over three hours of video and had no way to process it all.  By this time I had gone through four batteries on the Canon and two on the GoPro.  I’d had to change the cards out on both.  So I figured I probably had a little too much video.  But we did have to go to the lighthouse, because I figured a photo from the top of the lighthouse would be a crowning way to end the video.  But of course, when we got to the lighthouse you could not get up to the very top.  I was very disappointed.  🙁

So we ended the journey through the museum and headed out to let the boys run in the parking lot a bit.  Some of the things that we missed due to the time of the year and the rush through the museum where the gardens, the demonstrations at the blacksmith house and the print shop, and the stencil house which is hand decorated with stenciling inside.  You need to sign up for a scheduled tour for that particular exhibit because they’re afraid that people will touch it and damage it. Oh, I totally forgot to mention the covered bridge that I really thought was amazing.  I have seen a lot of covered bridges in my travels through New England, Pennsylvania and the 13 original colonies.  But this bridge was massively huge having two lanes, and an incredible arch structure.  And when I walked in it,  there was a couple of teenagers making out in the far end.  Apparently they didn’t need to ride the school bus back.  So the romance of a covered bridge remains even in 2017 !

So anyways, like the video, this blog went longer than I thought it would.  I would greatly encourage anyone going to the Burlington area to visit this magnificent collection of Americana.  The admission is a little high but it allows you to go two days.  And if you don’t want to kill yourself, take advantage of that.  There is a very nice shuttle that runs around the whole thing every 15 minutes, and my advice would be to get the pamphlet and see what you’d like to see and take the shuttle to get to where the crowds are not.  A few other simple things you might want to know, they do not allow strollers or children in a backpack in certain buildings, they do not allow tripods in the buildings, and they do not allow selfie sticks and have a rule against taking selfies.  I’d love to know how they go around policing that but it’s in the pamphlet so I assume it limits their liability when you trip over somebody taking a selfie in front of some exhibit.

So thanks for reading my blog, leave comments below or questions if you have them.  Check out the menu at the top and do some shopping if you can.  Stay safe.