It was a perfect summer day as we got onto Lake Champlain and traveled the short distance to an anchorage in North Harbor which is part of the Basin Harbor Resort. Our plan was to visit the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum which we had read about as being a very worthwhile visit.
By noon we arrived at our anchorage and had lunch on board before heading onto land. The Maritime Museum sits on the shores of Lake Champlain in a magnificent setting. We pulled up to their dock which was surrounded by several brightly painted rowing skiffs as well as a replica of an 1862 canal schooner, the Lois McClure.
We spent a couple of hours wandering through a collection of historic replicas of buildings representing various aspects of maritime life on Lake Champlain. The grounds were beautifully laid out. One of the buildings included information about the history of the wars in the area, another housed replicas and actual vessels showing the evolution of the canoe, another had a huge ice sailing boat and still another had some beautiful examples of old Chris Craft boats. There was a blacksmith shop and a boat builder who was working on building small sailing dinghies. He told us about the sailing and boat building programs the museum sponsors for young people and told us that the colorful boats on the dock where we came in were all built by program participants. We were fascinated!
Later that afternoon after returning to Zendo we took Archie on shore so he could run through the grounds and so I could load my blog since we had no connectivity onboard. We walked up the hill towards the resort to check out the restaurant and decided to dine there. The restaurant was filled with families, all of whom we assumed were staying at the resort. Afterwards we were encouraged by some of the young resort staff to go to a free outdoor concert hosted by the resort that was being held along the waterfront. We strolled over to see lots of people on lawn chairs enjoying the evening listening to a rock band.
The grounds of the resort were quite beautiful.
Nearby was the resort’s small and well-protected marina. The marina offers cruisers the use of their mooring balls for only $20 a night plus a resort fee which includes the privilege of using the pool and other resort services. We were more than comfortable with our anchorage which was adjacent to the mooring field.
After checking out the grounds we stopped for a soft serve ice cream cone which hit the spot!
Heading back to Zendo, we made an early night of it. Since we had no connectivity we hit the sack early, read for a while and pretty quickly fell asleep in our idyllic anchorage.
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