Category Archives: Bed & Breakfast

Mise Tales Forty-Two

For an update on what a Mise Tale is then please see Mise Tales One. As mentioned earlier on the front page of my website, any photos or cartoons, or short bits of information, when it is removed from the front page, will also be included again later in the next Misc Tales. That way you can keep track of it, search for it, or copy it.

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Video: What hidden treasures lie within Orfordness Lighthouse? Charitable trust opens the iconic landmark to the public before it’s taken by the sea

–  Monday, April 14, 2014 

Orfordness_Lighthouse
Orfordness Lighthouse is opening its doors to the public for the very first time. Nicholas Gold, the new owner of the lighthouse.

For centuries it served as a beacon of security, offering safe passage for thousands of seafarers.

Now, as the sea it once guarded over grows perilously close, the end of Orfordness Lighthouse looms near.

But before the iconic landmark is lost to the waves, a final chance to view it in all its glory has been made possible. . . more

To inquire about visiting email orfordnesslighthouse@gmail.com. Continue reading Mise Tales Forty-Two

Dreams of Being a Lighthouse Keeper

For years past, adults and children of all ages had dreams of growing up to be an adventurous lighthouse keeper. That dream is slowly dimming as the world automates its lighthouses.

The following article from The Guardian  brings to our attention the dimming of the dream in the UK

The lure of the lighthouse for our islanded souls
With the last lights set to go out, many of us will miss these concrete symbols of our humanity

by Joe Moran The Guardian, Saturday 12 April 2014.

Lighthouse, County Durham
The tower lights, the ones that rise impossibly out of the sea and carry the most romantic connotations for landlubberly ignoramuses like me, were the most dreaded by the keepers.’ Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

Growing up, I wanted to be a lighthouse keeper. Just like Moominpappa in Tove Jansson’s Moomin books, my ambition was to live on the loneliest lighthouse on the remotest skerry farthest from land. It didn’t end well for Moominpappa, the island he and the other Moomins settled on being barren and desolate, inhabited only by a silent fisherman who turned out to be the ex-lighthouse keeper driven mad by loneliness. It didn’t put me off.

I have since met many compatriots who have had the same dream, for there is something about lighthouses that seems to speak to our islanded souls. more . . .

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Now, to celebrate the quincentenary of Trinity House, the organisation responsible for the lighthouses of England and Wales, an exhibition is opening at the National Maritime Museum. Guiding Lights will display intricate models of lighthouses and lighthouse keepers’ personal effects. It is hard to imagine a similarly pulse-quickening exhibition about air-traffic controllers or road-safety officers, although our lives are similarly in their hands.

“I meant nothing by the lighthouse,” Virginia Woolf wrote of its role in her most celebrated novel, “but I trusted that people would make it the deposit for their own emotions.” Lighthouses, Woolf realised, are endlessly suggestive signifiers of both human isolation and our ultimate connectedness to each other. Artists, from John Constable to Eric Ravilious, have made them the focus of their paintings, which can’t simply be to do with their pleasingly vertical contrast with the horizon.

I suspect that lighthouses appeal especially to introverts like me, who need to make strategic withdrawals from the social world but also want to retain some basic link with humanity. A beam sweeping the horizon for the benefit of ships passing in the night is just that kind of minimal human connection. “Nothing must be allowed to silence our voices … We must call out to one another,” wrote Janet Frame, a shy New Zealand writer also fascinated by lighthouses, “across seas and deserts flashing words instead of mirrors and lights.”

I finally cured my lighthouse fantasy by reading Tony Parker’s oral history of lighthouse keepers. Looking after a light – no keeper ever called it a lighthouse – was, I learned, a tedious job, with little to do but linger over meals and make ships in bottles. One keeper was so lonely that in the middle of the night he switched on the transmitter and listened to the ships radioing each other, just to hear some other human voices. The tower lights, the ones that rise impossibly out of the sea and carry the most romantic connotations for landlubberly ignoramuses like me, were the most dreaded by the keepers. Without even a bit of rock to walk around on and escape from your housemates, they were the lighthouse-keeping equivalent of being posted to Siberia.

In any case, I was well out of it because lighthouse keeping was not a job with prospects.

The lighthouses began to be automated in the 1970s and the last keeper left the last occupied lighthouse in 1998. Now, in an age of radar and computerised navigation systems, working lighthouses are an endangered species. Their haunting fog signals are being switched off. Their black-and-red painted stripes, meant to stand out against the land and sky, are being left to peel off. And many lighthouses are being decommissioned, turned into holiday cottages or expensively renovated homes.

No doubt satnav will now do the job just as well, but it will be a shame when the last lighthouse turns off its light. In an age when we have to justify public projects with the consumerist language of stakeholders and end users, lighthouses still feel like an uncomplicated social good that belongs to us all. They are the concrete symbol of our common humanity, of the fact that people we may never meet – at whom we may do no more than flash our lights in the dark – are also our concern.

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One of my dad’s oldest friends was a lighthouse keeper for a few years. He was sometimes posted to those lights that stand alone on a rock. In a ‘big sea’ waves could be so high that water would come down the chimney and put the fire out. He also said that if your hearing went dull it meant that the level you were on was underwater because of a big swell – and a thick metal door was the only thing keeping the Atlantic out.

There are terrible stories. One was the lighthouse often had to eat the tallow candles when ships bringing supplies could not make it through the rough sea. Also the tradition of 2 keepers came into being when one single went out of his mind.
I’ve a slight problem with repeated ref to concrete. Most early lights were built with granite(or timber with plinth granite) interlocked water proof hydraulic cement. Smeaton’s Eddystone the prototype, and later Stephenson family business up north.

To be honest lighthouses are no longer necessary as the coastline is now starkly outlined by the amount of light pollution from our towns, cities and villages. You really can’t miss it when sailing down the coast. Also our new technologies are way in advance of anything we’ve had in the past and even a small yacht can now pinpoint its position to a matter of metres on the ocean. So if we do have any shipping catastrophes in the future they are likely to be down to human error.

“even a small yacht can now pinpoint its position to a matter of metres”

I too sail a small yacht in and around NW Scotland and, because I lack all but the most basic GPS, compasses and echo sounder, greatly value our lighthouses – albeit, unmanned. You will know that whenever NATO carry out exercises in the Minch, warships regularly cause GPS screens to go blank!!!  Serious accidents are not unknown.

You are referring to an exercise 2 years ago where warships blocked GPS for 20 miles. There were no accidents but due to complaints Warships in UK waters are now banned from blocking GPS. I’m not sure about other navies though.

Not every small boat has radar… not all coastlines are outlined by light pollution.

But most people now have mobile phones/iPads/Tablets with GPS.

Please, please, please do not go to sea relying on an iPad/phone etc for navigation! Road signs, and indeed ‘roads’ themselves are fairly limited at sea in my experience.

I can see one of our oldest lighthouses from here. It is on the top of St Catherine’s Down and known locally as the Pepperpot. It was built by local people as a punishment for buying smuggled wine. There was an oratory attached to it at one time to say prayers for the souls of the shipwrecked of whom there were many and the graves in the churchyard will attest. Although high up it wasn’t much use as the mist which frequently covers that part of the coast line blocked out the light when it was most needed and many ships went aground on the notorious Atherfield ledge. The new lighthouse built by the shore is a beautiful building and it would be a great shame if it were to become just another house, although coastal erosion and land slips might put off anyone but the most foolhardy from purchasing.

Foolish idea turning these off. Given potential failures of equipment these are very useful as a last backup. Oh well I’m sure it saves some middle managers budget some money somewhere.

This is a shame, lighthouses are exciting. I don’t think it’s possible to go on holidays to the coast without spending some time watching out for the distant lights and trying to identify them. I know we used to look forward to foggy days so we could hear their fog horns going off.

And at night, if you were staying in a house nearby, some of the beam would sweep around the bedroom from time to time.

Many years ago I recall reading an article in some sailing magazine. Title was The Antikythera Light. The author told of sailing through a storm in the Eastern Med. He had been at sea for days on end and the storm had bounced his small boat around quite a bit. This was long before GPS and he didn’t know exactly where he was. He knew he was approaching the Greek islands and some very dangerous and rocky shores. Then, flickering on the horizon in the far distance and through the storm…a flashing light. Lights flash in timed sequences and those are indicated on charts. He identified this one as the light on Antikythera, the island in the center of the passage through into the Aegean Sea.

Now he knew where he was. Now he was safe. He wrote of his grateful appreciation, not only for the light keeper whose job it was to help people the keeper would never see, but to the society that posted the man there and built the tower and light that led him to safety out of a storm, money spent for no special benefit to the community but only to the benefit of passing strangers in need of help.It was a wonderful essay on how humanity consists of people doing altruistic things, not only for strangers, but for strangers they would never know needed the help. Lighthouses are a symbol of what is best in all of us.

A good few years ago we did the soundtrack to this short documentary about the some of the last people to man the lighthouses, they tell their stories and explain how automation affected them, very sad some of it: http://vimeo.com/m/71760571

Bishop Rock lighthouse – the westernmost point of the Isles of Scilly – that’s the one I’d most like to go inside. And I’d pay good money to see the BBC documentary about it, by Tony Parker, first shown just over 40 years ago:  http://trinityhousehistory.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/on-this-day-in-trinity-house-history-6-february/

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Mise Tales Thirty-Nine

 

For an update on what a Mise Tale is then please see Mise Tales One.

As mentioned earlier on the front page of my website, any photos or cartoons, or short information will also be included again later in the next Misc Tales when it is removed from the front page. That way you can keep track of it, search for it, or copy it.

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Enduring Lights – The Lighthouse Keeper is a historic documentary told through the accounts of four lighthouse keepers who tended America’s lighthouses in the 1900’s and never let the light go out. These men are living parts of history and their stories exemplify their significance in American history. – by Todd J. Burgess, photographer and video producer.

See his photo work in yesterday’s post Lighthouse in a Mason Jar.

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Wolf Trap Lighthouse For Sale

Back in February 2013 I posted the article below on my front page:

Wolf Trap Lighthouse for Sale The lighthouse is for sale for $249,500 by a private owner. It was first offered for nonprofit and historical properties under the Lighthouse Preservation Act, but it was auctioned when it received no offers in 2005. Laura Pierce of ERA Bay Real Estate explains, “You would have to restore it and update it, but someone could live there full time or part time.” . . . more

 

[private]The home measures about 1,500 sq. feet, according to Pierce, with five floors, including the top floor, which contains the light. As an added incentive, Pierce mentions that because the home is a historic property, it’s tax-exempt, and the state of Virginia will offer tax credits to the next owner who restores the home to its former glory.[/private]

Excerpted from NBC news, here. 

Editor’s Note: Want to read more about the trials and tribulations of owning a decommissioned Chesapeake lighthouse? You can read our full-length feature, Got A Light? online.

Reprint – In the Sanctuary of the White Bear

In the Sanctuary of the White Bear   Green Living   The Ecologist

A rare white ‘spirit bear’ in the BC temperate rainforest. Photo: Ian McAllister / pacificwild.org.

[su_quote cite=”To many who live here, this singular being is an emblem of the sacredness of the rain coast and its vulnerability. “][/su_quote]

In the sanctuary of the White Bear by Canadian Poet Lorna Crozier

17th November 2013

 

Poet Lorna Crozier vists the Great Bear Rainforest in BC, Canada and finds a fragile paradise imbued with myth, meaning and magic for local indigenous peoples.

The big grizzly is perched on the other side of the river bank, so near he can hear the rain on my jacket. He raises his blunt head and courses the air. Stares at me and sniffs.

Above the stench of rotting salmon, my smell has been drawn into a grizzly’s nostrils, through the nasal passages inside his long snout. Part of me now lives inside the mind of an omnivorous animal whose Latin name ends with horribilis.

The bear is here for the salmon, who have returned to the rivers of their birth to spawn and die. We’re here for the bears.

Photographer/filmmaker Ian McAllister has joined my husband Patrick and me on our first morning to help introduce us to his home turf, the Great Bear Rainforest, a tract of land that follows B.C.’s coastline from the tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska Panhandle. He and his wife Karen run the Pacific Wild conservation group to protect this astonishing piece of wildness that they’ve known intimately for over twenty years.

The largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, the traditional territory of the Kitasoo / Xai’xais First Nation, this region is only two short flights from Vancouver. But we are as far from a city, as far from ordinary life, as you can get. . . . more

This essay originally appeared in Toque & Canoe, and in Counterpunch.

[private]With seven others, we’ve been bounced across the ocean to our riverside destination in an old forestry boat. At home, most of us can’t spare the time to meet a friend for coffee, but here we’ll wait side by side, motionless and quiet, for several hours in the drenching rain.

Two guides armed only with pepper spray keep watch over us. They assure us they’ve never had to use it. Their confidence and my excitement make me tuck any fears I have away – into a back jeans pocket I can’t reach under my layers of hoodie, vest, jacket and rain gear.

All of us crouch with binoculars and cameras, careful not to sink our knees into a salmon. Hundreds of them, tossed by bears from the river, are turning into a foul mush. When the grizzly appears again, about twenty feet across from us on the other shore, we know Ian is getting the best pictures. We keep snapping anyway.

Our group is staying at the First Nations-owned and operated Spirit Bear Lodge located on the ocean’s edge in the fishing village of Klemtu.

Through its tall windows, we scan what looks like a National Geographic documentary. Pointing out seals and eagles, we and the other guests, most of them from Europe, crowd around the window like kids around an ice-cream truck.

Maybe if we’re lucky, at dusk, we’ll see one of the wolves unique to the western coast. Along with deer, they catch salmon.

The lodge is modeled on the traditional long house and it’s named after the elusive white bear called the ‘Spirit Bear‘.

Raven, the traditional story goes, made one out of every 10 black bears white to remind us of the ice age. This unique creature is here to make us grateful: the world wasn’t always as green and lush as it is today.

Every morning, rainforest life generously comes to meet us. Five senses aren’t enough to take it all in.

Isn’t this what Canada’s all about? Barely inhabited, out-of-the-way places that remind humans who we were before we became so fearful, so tame? Before we became so destructive as a species?

As twilight falls, we return to the lodge by boat for its scrumptious dinners, the halibut so fresh that the name of the man who hooked it and the date he did are listed on the menu. Manager Tim McGrady – fierce in his love of this watery ecosystem – greets us at the dock and asks what we’ve seen.

Over the 12-foot-long cedar dinner table, Patrick and I go on and on about a mother and a baby humpback, the mother slapping her tail repeatedly on the taut skin of the ocean. Was it whales who invented drumming?

Five minutes later, we would see two Orcas knife through the water. Then we understood. The humpback was warning her nearby pod and scaring off these skillful hunters who might have targeted her calf.

The next day, I travel up the ocean channel to an old crab apple grove where a spirit bear might appear. Patrick chooses a shorter trip. In my case, the spirit bear lives up to its other name – ghost bear – and stays invisible.

But Patrick sees a grizzly flop on her back to feed her triplets, so close a camera catches a drop of milk on her nipple when one cub tumbles off her belly.

I’m jealous. But an afternoon boat trip on the Pacific makes up for what I missed.

Patrick and I watch two humpbacks blow an elongated oval of bubbles to trap shrimp-like krill. The whales then rise to the surface through the centre of this airy net, their magnificent mouths wide open, catching their meal.

Looking down a whale’s gullet makes me shiver. Boy, how small I am!

On the day a storm blows in and the boats can’t go out, Doug Neasloss, the visionary behind the lodge, invites us into the Big House in Klemtu and tells us the history of his people and the work they’re doing to protect their homeland.

In 2012, they declared their territory off-limits to trophy hunting of bears (even though the B.C. gov’t allows it). Then, with other Coastal First Nations, they made a film about a grizzly skinned and left to rot in a field, head and paws carried out past a sign banning such hunting.

The timing of the film is sadly relevant. Just before its release this past September, The Vancouver Sun published photos of a defenceman with the NHL’s Minnesota Wild – how ironic is that name? – holding the severed head of a grizzly he shot in a rainforest estuary.

The tenderness the Kitasoo / Xai’xais feel for their culture and their home territory is palpable. We hear it in our skippers, who are all from Klemtu, and in Sierra, a grade 11 student who’s one of the lodge’s guides-in-training.

Every night in bed, she reads one of her people’s stories, and in her dreams, she’s in the story, walking among the humans and the creatures of the forest. The humans and the animals are talking to one another.

Many believe the Spirit Bear has special powers, she tells me.

Having sunk into the moss floors of the forests, having been held in the mind of a grizzly and the eye of a whale, I’m O.K., this time, to have missed Raven’s reminder of the ice age.

I’m sure there’s another reason for its creation, a reason that will sink in after I’m back home.

To many who live here, this singular being is an emblem of the sacredness of the rain coast and its vulnerability. They fear for potential oil spills in the area.

To them, this nightmare is a real and present danger as various levels of the Canadian government debate the sanctioning of oil tanker traffic through this delicate ecosystem.

They imagine the white bear soaked in oil, rivers and estuaries thick with crude muck, salmon thrashing in its slick, and orcas smeared with bitumen.

I’ve fallen under the spell of this rare sanctuary where salmon are born and die, where wolves have learned to swim and fish, and where mist may turn suddenly into the lumbering body of a mystic bear.

How diminished, how thin-hearted, how lonely we are as a species if there aren’t safe places in the world where the unique, the magnificent, can survive.

Postscript: The day after Patrick and I arrived home, Oliver from Germany, one of our companions who’d stayed an extra day at Spirit Bear Lodge, wrote that he did see a Spirit Bear. It stepped out of the moss-draped trees onto the stones of a river where he was set up with his camera on the other side. How thrilled he was. He’s seen what few people in his country, what few people in Canada or in the world, have ever seen. Check out thislink to his images

Lorna Crozier is a Canadian poet and holds the Head Chair in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria.

This essay originally appeared in Toque & Canoe, and in Counterpunch.[/private]

Mise Tales Twenty-Eight

 

For an update on what a Mise Tale is then please see Mise Tales One.

The Lovely Bones   IMDb

The Lovely Bones   IMDb2

Has anyone seen the movie released in 2009 entitled The Lovely Bones? It features a fictitious lighthouse marking the entrance way to heaven in a thoroughly entertaining film.

“Centers on a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family – and her killer – from purgatory. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal.” – IMDb

There is one strange thing about this lighthouse – the light in the lantern revolves counter-clockwise (CCW)! This is most unusual and there are only a few lighthouses in the world that revolve CCW, the majority revolving clockwise (CW).

A couple I found were in Australia. Does anyone know the whys and wherefores of CW vs CCW rotation of the lamp? I think this deserves further investigation and maybe a future article. Thanks for any help you can contribute. Continue reading Mise Tales Twenty-Eight

Mystery Lighthouse!

mystery_lighthouse
Do you see the lighthouse? Is that not an impressive view!

The photo above was in a website for a Canadian west coast (Vancouver Island, British Columbia) resort. This is the actual view from one of the rooms. I could just imagine being there myself and seeing the waves beat up against the lighthouse island as I relaxed in comfort within the resort.

I even knew what lighthouse it was, or I thought I did! Continue reading Mystery Lighthouse!

Mise Tales Twenty-Two

 

For an update on what a Mise Tale is then please see Mise Tales One.

Lighthouse B&Bs let guests play keeper for a night Chris Wadsworth, special for USA TODAYJanuary 27, 2013

(Photo: GoEscape)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

 Most lighthouses are automated, and most ships are guided by satellites, radar and computers today

  • Many old lighthouses are finding new life as charming bed-and-breakfasts and rental homes
  • Lighthouse stays are available in more than a dozen states
  • Lighthouse stays are available in more than a dozen states . . . more

[private] Once guardians of the seashore, lighthouses stood tall against wind and storm, guiding ships of yore to safety along America’s coastline.

Romantic? Sure, but no longer a reality. Today, most lighthouses are automated, and most ships are guided by satellites, radar and computers rather than lights, horns and bells from a distant tower.

That’s why many old lighthouses are finding new life as charming bed-and-breakfasts and rental homes.

The U.S. has handed over many federally owned lighthouses to local municipalities, nonprofits and private operators. The goal: offer visitors unique lodging while preserving the structures and keeping them accessible to citizens.

Lighthouse stays are available in more than a dozen states. Check out these four in the Pacific Northwest, which allow you to experience what it’s like to live in a lighthouse. 

 

 EAST BROTHER LIGHT STATION

East Brother Island | Richmond, Calif.

Set sail to reach one of the most unique bed-and-breakfasts in North America—the island of East Brother, home to the East Brother Light Station, 30 minutes from downtown San Francisco. Operational for more than 133 years, the light station offers guests luxurious rooms, four of them in the light station itself. The other one is in the adjacent Fog Signal Building.

A stay includes champagne and hors-d’oeuvres upon arrival, a sumptuous dinner with wine and a full breakfast. “It’s a remote place. You have all these Victorian-style rooms, this Victorian house with a white picket fence. We’re trying to create a romantic atmosphere,” says innkeeper Richard Foregger.

Tour the small island, learn its fascinating history and relax with amazing views of San Francisco, Mount Tamalpais and the Marin County coastline. $295–$415 per night; 117 Park Pl .; 510-233-2385; ebls.org

HECETA HEAD LIGHTHOUSE*

Heceta Head Lighthouse
Heceta Head Lighthouse

Situated on a cliff 150 feet above the crashing surf, the Heceta Head Lighthouse is one of the most dramatic sights along the Pacific Coast.(Photo: GoEscape)

  Heceta Head State Park | South Yachats, Ore.

Situated on a cliff 150 feet above the crashing surf, the Heceta Head Lighthouse is one of the most dramatic sights along the Pacific Coast. Nearby sits one of the original lightkeeper’s cottages—Heceta House—re-imagined and renovated as a charming bed-and-breakfast. Cozy rooms with views of the 56-foot-tall tower and the Pacific Ocean beyond play host to up to 15 guests in six bedrooms.

Heceta House serves seven-course gourmet breakfasts, featuring artisan cheeses, fresh produce and homemade pastries. It’s also known for Rue, the friendly ghost rumored to roam the property.

An Oregon State Parks and Recreation spokesman wouldn’t confirm the legend of Rue. “As a public employee, what I can say is I love stories like that because they spark your imagination,” says Chris Havel. “I encourage visitors to learn about the rich history of this part of the Oregon coast and have fun with stories like that. They bring the landscape to life.” $133–$315 per night; 92072 Hwy. 101; 866-547-3696;hecetalighthouse.com

*Heceta Head Lighthouse is undergoing renovations until August 2013. However, tours are ongoing and the visitors’ center is open. The bed-and-breakfast is also open throughout the renovations.

  NORTH HEAD LIGHTHOUSE

 Cape Disappointment State Park | Ilwaco, Wash.

Three lovely rental residences await overnight visitors near Washington’s famed 65-foot-tall North Head Lighthouse at the mouth of the Columbia River, a treacherous and turbulent stretch of water where the river meets the Pacific Ocean.

Located in Cape Disappointment State Park, the Head Lightkeeper’s home is a century-old Victorian house with breathtaking views of the ocean. Nearby are the Assistant Lightkeepers’ residences—smaller, but still beautiful. “They’re absolutely gorgeous,” says Linda Burnett, a spokesperson for Washington State Parks. “The residences themselves and the furnishings are very luxurious compared to the primitive camping you might envision at a state park.”

Just watch out for the wind. North Head is known as the windiest lighthouse area in the nation, frequently recording wind speeds of 100 miles per hour. Staff love to tell the tale of a duck that blew off course in 1932, crashed through a lighthouse window and chipped the lantern’s mammoth lens. Assistant lightkeeper’s residence: $224–$299 per night depending on season, head lightkeeper’s residence: $318–$424 per night depending on season; North Head Lighthouse Rd.;360-902-8844;parks.wa.gov/vacationhouses/capedisappointment

POINT ROBINSON LIGHTHOUSE

Maury Island, Wash.

Maury Island in Washington’s Puget Sound is the setting for the 38-foot Point Robinson Lighthouse built in 1915. It shares a sandy beach with two renovated keeper’s quarters rental homes, perfect for families and small groups to get away and unwind. The two bungalows have full kitchens, sitting parlors and porches, all with stunning views of the sound.

Captain Joe Wubbold, president of the nonprofit Keepers of Point Robinson organization, says the quarters aren’t luxurious, but rather homey and comfortable. “They are the way that they were when the keepers from the lighthouse service were living there,” he says. “We have appliances in there that go back to the era. It’s really a beautiful restoration.”

Outside, water birds abound around the lighthouse, and the busy shipping lanes are filled with colorful watercraft of all shapes and sizes. The larger Vashon Island is just a short drive across a manmade isthmus from Point Robinson. $975–$1,580 per week depending on season, $225 per night in the off-season (two-night minimum stay); 206-463-9602

If you find yourself caught up imagining the adventures of those long-ago lighthouse keepers, there’s an amazing opportunity for you. Some old lighthouses now offer what are called keeper programs, where you pay a small fee and then get to live and work at a lighthouse for one to two weeks.

For example, the New Dungeness Light Station on a spit of land in Canada’s Strait of Juan de Fuca, offers families the chance to work as keepers. Duties include watering plants, mowing the lawn and giving tours of the light station to the public, including climbing all 74 steps. For more info on keeper programs, visit uslhs.org.

This article is excerpted from GoEscape, USA TODAY’s travel magazine, on sale now. Buy wherever magazines are sold or at goescape.usatoday.com. [/private] 

 

And Pinterest Does it Again! More lighthouse pictures!

Pinterest
Pinterest page

 Are You Interested in Supporting Two Film Producers to Make a Film Called “Lighthouse”

A dramatic tale of fatherhood, relationships and dedication based on the story of The Prodigal Son in Luke 15. . .  more

 

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 How To Make A Beautiful Clay Pot Lighthouse ideas-clay-pot-lighthouses

What a wonderful neat idea to make a lighthouse from clay pots. Staked and on top of it a light ( or perhaps even a solar garden light) this definitely makes for an eye-catching garden decoration.

It’s really easy to do and painting the lighthouse in the color of your choice will make it “fit” perfectly into your garden or backyard. Check out this easy to-follow tutorial via the link below (make sure you scroll down on the page – the drawing and explanation are here: Terra Cotta Lighthouse

 

Picture BC – a New Website

My website here is about British Columbia (BC) lighthouses and the environment surrounding them.

Just recently a good friend sent me an email to a website called Picture BC, a delightful photo and video tour of the province of British Columbia, Canada – as beautiful now as when it was created in 2008.

Picture BC - Fisgard Lighthouse
Picture BC photo

According to the site:

Picture BC is an initiative of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM), an organization representing the communities participating in this website. The idea and support for Picture BC came from the Province of British Columbia.

[media url=”https://ccanadaht3.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/PBC_intro_video_FINAL-1.flv” width=”400″ height=”350″]

The site contains a five (5) minute video tour of the whole of BC (above) which is very well done. If you have never been to BC, you will want to come and visit after seeing this video. If you plan on coming, this is where the lighthouses are. The video shows two or three lighthouses near the end of the clip but there are many more on the BC coast.

There are interactive maps of the regions of BC with links to most cities in the province.

There are also some beautiful photos of major tourist destinations in BC, as well as scenes which cannot be seen unless you take a helicopter or plane ride.

The website is done with Adobe Flash player so it is a bit tricky to manouever around, but have patience – it is worth it!

Enjoy!