Our first stop was the Shelburne Museum. It was started in 1947 by Electra Havemeyer Webb. She was an avid collector of European art and Americana. She started collecting buildings from all over New England and New York and reassembling them on her property. She modified the interiors to hold the art works she had acquired. The collection is extremely varied. There is everything from Impressionist paintings to tools. Each building houses a different collection.
One of my favorites was the Ticonderoga, a side wheel steam ship that worked the Lake Champlain waters. It is the only remaining side wheel steam ship in America. When it left service in the 1950’s, she was pulled out of the water and moved two miles to the museum. It was fully restored once it was permanently housed at the museum.
There were staterooms on the steamer, but it never went on any overnight trips. The “bridal suite” cost $3.00. It was a way to get some privacy during a long trip. The dining room was extremely elegant. I loved the woodwork throughout the ship, some of it still showed the gold guild. It was the large walking beam steam engine that was amazing to see. It stuck out of the top of the ship.
Kim’s favorite exhibit was the Beach Lodge. It was full of stuffed animals gathered from many hunting expeditions. She has started asking me to get a bearskin rug, complete with a head and claws. I will have to look into it when we get home.
Her second favorite thing was to put me in jail. When we got to the restored school house, she automatically started to teach. Old habits seem to die hard.
Electra’s mother was a close friend of Mary Cassatt. She and her mother had collected several of Mary Cassatt’s paintings. The museum was able to get several pieces in on loan to supplement their holdings. One of the rooms focused on her friendship with Degas.
After Electra died, her children built a special building on the grounds. They removed the interiors from Electra’s New York City apartment and reassembled them in this building. They put her artwork in here as well. Our favorite room was the one with the Monet’s.
The last building we went through was the 1950’s home. It was decorated with 1950’s style furnishings. Kim and I found several things that we could recognize from our own familiy and friends’ homes as we grew up.
As always, when we are ready to leave a museum, we had to stop in the museum shop. Kim spent many minutes looking for things to decorate the home. I was getting antsy; I knew what was coming next. I could feel the vibes or magic emanating from our next stop.
Finally we arrived at the holy land, the Magic Hat Brewery in South Burlington, VT. It has been my favorite brewery for many years. One time when I was on a ski trip through Vermont, I was looking for some beer for the night. The unique labeling and name is what drew me to the product. It was the awesome product hidden inside the brown bottle that made me come back for more. My favorite beer was Blind Faith. I found out that it was discontinued last year. It was the only beer that Magic Hat retired that received a funeral.
When we sampled our first beer, I asked about a tour. The brewery is undergoing an expansion and construction is not complete. I was informed that there are no tours. However, one of the employees popped into the tent and said she could give an informal tour. She was a bit rusty on the tour since she hadn’t given one in a few years. She also informed us she had finished working for the day an hour ago and had sampled some of the beer since quitting time. She still did a good job. She told us that Magic Hat is the fastest growing brewery in America right now. In the last three years, they have tripled their output and are running at maximum capacity right now. Their goal is to be able to supply all of the states east of the Mississippi River after the expansion is complete.
After the tour, there were several more beers to try. I was going to buy some cases of beer to take home, but they had run out of the styles I wanted. So I left with a growler of their new experimental brew. It was a little sour and they had put grapefruit in during the brewing. It was a little different and I took to it immediately. I am hoping that it will make it home safely. I could not sample too much. Kim has yet to get a handle on driving a manual transmission and the traffic was heavy.
Kim wanted to go back to Boves for dinner again. I tried their signature dish, lasagna. It was very good. We were going to buy some of their sauce to take home, but we were informed that we could buy it at Wegmans. We will look for it when we go home.
Kim has an obsession with brewpubs and took me there again tonight. It was by far the best of the trip. It is American Flatbread. They had nine beers on tap and did not have samplers. We didn’t want to stay out long, so that meant that I was only going to get to taste a few. Luckily the waitress brought out three samples to go with my IPA. The IPA was by far the best of the trip, so far. The stout was extremely smooth. I would go back here in a heartbeat.
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