Happy Wednesday friends! I hope that you are having a wonderful week! I am so excited to share my Tuesday travel post today and highlight the incredible experience that we had at the Shelburne Museum visiting their holiday winter lights experience!
Winter Lights is an opportunity to see Shelburne Museum all decked out in beautiful holiday lights and y'all they were definitely gorgeous. Starting the last weekend in November and going through January 1st, you can purchase tickets online for 30 minute intervals. Tickets for adults are $15, children (ages 3-17) are $10, and children 2 and under are free.
One of the things that I saw on the website was the opportunity to contact Bonnie for information regarding accessibility. I wrote her explaining about mom's knee surgery and asked for additional information on the exhibit. She explained that it was approximately a 1/2 mile walk but that there was a drive through option on Sunday evenings. The time for the drive through was exactly the same as the ticket time (30 minutes) and you had the opportunity to follow Bonnie's car, driving slowly through the exhibit. The cost for an entire car was $65. We made the reservations and proceeded to take the tour.
It honestly was simply lovely.
We both loved seeing all of the lights and the opportunity to experience this experience was delightful.
The drive was incredibly slow so it was easy to take some pictures and really take in each thing you were seeing. At different points Bonnie would stop the cars so you could see different exhibits and hear the Christmas music that was playing in that area.
We had such a great time! It was so full of joy!
It was beautiful and lovely for both my mom and I!
As you look and see these pictures you will see that there are tons of different buildings on the property. That is because the founder, Electra Havemeyer Webb, desired to preserve and create a "collection of collections", which included historic buildings. From the countrysides of New England and New York, Mrs. Webb found and moved historic buildings onto the property that is now Shelburne Museum. These buildings included houses, barns, a meeting house, a one-room schoolhouse, a lighthouse (seen in the picture above), a jail, covered bridge, a general store and (my personal favorite!) the 220 foot steamboat Ticonderoga. It is honestly amazing to see all of that history so carefully preserved on the property!
The vintage carousel was one of my favorite things to see. Isn't it darling?
The carousel is operational from May through October and all decked out in the lights made for an enchanting scene!
For personal reasons, the Ticonderoga is an absolute favorite. My mom was telling me stories of how she remembers going out in a boat with her family to meet the steamboat when she was a young child. It brought such happy memories for her to see this boat preserved so carefully and was so precious for me to learn more about!
We loved seeing this and the way the lights have been placed that truly made it look like the steamboat was going through waves!
Finding out that there was a way to drive through winter lights was a beautiful gift. It has been surprisingly hard to find lots of disability/accessibility friendly Christmas events and this was just lovely. A HUGE thank you to Shelburne Museum for offering a way for everyone in the community to visit and see Winter Lights!
This post was NOT sponsored. I have received some messages since my reel on instagram went live on this experience mentioning the cost difference between a regular ticket and the accessibility/driving ticket. For example, the cost is per car not per person. I would definitely agree that this was something that could and should be re-visited by Shelburne in the future. If you have questions about it I would reach out directly to Shelburne and discuss it with them. For us, it was such a lovely experience that it was a true joy to be able to have a way to enjoy it and that is what we were most grateful for!
Post a Comment