I got my wake-up call this morning for 6:30am (!) but I was keen to do this lighthouse tour. It seemed like a small sacrifice for excellent viewing opportunities of the island and to expand my paltry knowledge of what it takes to run a lighthouse.
And learn we did… I should get Eric to write a guest blog entry about this, except he’s NAPPING like an old man from our excursion. We had to rise early to walk the four miles from the beach house to the lighthouse, and since there are no roads on Fire Island there was no straight path to follow; we zigzagged along boardwalks and sand trails until the lighthouse came into view. We hoofed it there to make it for 9:00, leaving around 7:30.
We were shown the engine room and taken up into the top of the lighthouse while there was some maintenance being done by the volunteers who run the preservation society. The views from up there gave me a better lay of the land, too, but I’ll have to put in those photos later once I get back to my own computer.
After the tour we took the four-mile journey back to the house along the beach, which is probably the longest continuous stretch of beach I have walked on, ever. Even in Australia where I practically lived on the beach I don’t think I ever walked for more than an hour in a single direction. To make up for the power-walking this morning, the beach trek was at a much more leisurely pace, inspecting the marine life washed up on shore and observing the waves crashing over the surfers.
Let me tell you, this is the life… I really miss the ocean and I love being oceanside again!
