Today we took time to drive home and explore. First stop the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium located in St. Johnsbury, VT. It is a combination museum and planetarium. It was founded in 1891, by Franklin Fairbanks. The entire collection includes 160,000 objects.
This is a carousel horse by Edmond Brown. He was a cabinet maker and a wood carver. His carvings are famous if you are into carousels.
They had some nice artifacts here but mostly it was filled with animals.
Second stop is a covered bridge in Bath, NH.
The Haverhill-Bath Covered Bridge is over the Ammonoosuc River joining Bath and Woodsville, NH. Formerly used to carry New Hampshire Route 135, the bridge was idled in 1999.
Third and final stop is the site of the Gage accident in Cavendish, VT. A memorial plaque to one of America's oddest celebrities is bolted to a rock in the tiny town. It honors Phineas P. Gage, who had a 13-pound iron rod blown into his skull, through his brain, and out the top of his head. That's an interesting story, but what makes it plaque-worthy is that Gage survived. In fact, he never even lost consciousness.
The accident happened on September 13, 1848. Gage, a foreman at a railroad construction site, absentmindedly pounded his tamping rod into a hole filled with blasting powder. The explosives blew the 43-inch-long rod upward and completely through Gage's head, landing with a thud about 30 yards away (Note to Phineas Gage impersonators: walking around with a rod stuck out of both sides of your head is historically incorrect). Gage lived for a dozen subsequent cuss-filled years. No longer the model employee, he used his fame to get out of New England.
This is where the incident happened down the street from the plaque.
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