A Birthday Visit to ECHO Science Museum

Sheila and our granddaughter, Ellie, share a birthday so we tend to celebrate both birthdays together each year.  For their birthdays over the past few years, we've visited the ECHO Science Museum in Burlington and then gone out for lunch and this is what we did this year too.  It was a really nice day for all of us especially for Ellie and Gee!

Our drive up to Burlington was longer than usual with far more traffic because the interstate highway was closed due to a bad accident.  The traffic didn't actually get bad until the last 15 miles...  from Richmond into Burlington.  From Richmond on, we were in bumper to bumper, slow-moving traffic.

We had to travel on US Route 2 which is only one lane each way.  Fortunately, I actually enjoy the drive on this road and we hadn't driven this route since last summer so it was really a nice change until traffic was too heavy.  

I used to live on US Route 2 for many years and I liked that it is one of the longest roads in the country...  from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean interrupted only briefly by the Great Lakes in the midwest.  When I was younger and healthier while living on this road, I racked up thousands of miles jogging and riding my bicycle on this road.  It would be a great bicycle ride going from coast to coast!

When we arrived at ECHO, Ellie was all wound up as we started our museum visit repeating, over and over, "this is the best birthday ever!" and dancing around...

There is an abundance of aquariums in this museum, home to many of the wildlife species found in Lake Champlain.  I happen to enjoy photographing aquariums so I had more than enough stuff to keep me busy...

An old photo of Champ in Lake Champlain...

There was a dinosaur exhibit at the museum on this day so Ellie got to play among the animatronic dinosaurs for a bit...

Afterward, we went to The Longhorn for lunch and Ellie was able to open a few birthday gifts...

We had a really nice day.  The interstate highway was open again for our drive back home so we had a relatively quick trip home unlike the drive to Burlington!