Our Trip to Vermont

We promised Cody MONTHS ago that we would take him to Echo, The Leahy Center for Lake Champlain. It is a lake aquarium/interactive museum. The traveling exhibit for the summer is dinosaurs, so that was a must see for my 11 year old!

It was a beautiful day for a trip to Vermont. We live about an hour and a half from Burlington Vt, and much of the travel is secondary roads before we make it to the interstate for the last leg of the trip. Lake Champlain was just glittering yesterday, the sun made it beautiful. The cows grazing in the fields, all the wildflowers and roadside vegetable stands-everything was wonderful!

Cody loved the Echo center. They had all kinds of wildlife from our area--fish, turtles, snakes, lizards-all set up in really neat habitats. They had all kinds of interactive displays for kids to take part in.

The traveling dinosaur display had an actual dinosaur from Jurassic Park--the selling point in Cody's mind. The skeleton next to the JP Velociraptor is the actual size of the dinosaur...they made then considerable bigger for the movie!! They had some really cool displays...of course they were all in the dark, and under glass--a picture taker's nightmare!! I managed to get a few good shots, though!

The building is on Burlington's waterfront, with 2nd story balcony's facing the water. The sun beating down was wonderful. We watched dozens of sailboats on the water, along with the tour boat "The Spirit of Ethan Allen" and the Lake Champlain Ferry.

After the museum, we had some lunch, and I visited the LSS--only to find it closing it's doors with everything 30% off and half empty shelves...what a bummer!! That was the closest LSS--and now it is closing.

All in all, it was a wonderful day. The days we get to do something like this together are few and far between, and yesterday taught us that we need to take more time to do these things....life is short and there are no do-overs....

Get out and do things--it doesnt' have to cost a lot of money--I realized yesterday that I take for granted what a beautiful area I live in. The best places to visit are close to your home!!