More Lighthouses (10/07)

We start the day with a lazy drive down the coast to the Bodie lighthouse.  This lighthouse was built in 1872  is 156 ft high with 219 stairs.  Yesterdays lighthouse only had 214 steps so this is slightly taller.  I brace by self for the trip up those stairs.  This time it is a tour, the park service does not let you go up on your own.  It was nice to get a history lesson along with the walk up the stairs.  This is the third Bodie lighthouse, the first was built in the wrong place.  Instead of being in Bodie they discovered once it was built it was actually on Pea island.  They thought they had built it on sound ground but unfortunately it was built on sand and after a couple of years was leaning so much that the lighthouse keepers refused to climb the stairs any longer. So it was taken down and a new one was put up again on Pea Island but in a better location.  This time they did make sure it had a good foundation and it stood tall and straight.  But then came the Civil war and when the island was being attacked the Confederate Army decided they did not want to leave it for the invading North so they blew it up.  So it was finally built in Bodie in 1872.  The climb wasn't so bad and the view at the top is well worth the climb.

View from the top!

 What would these pictures be without the boot shot!!!!

Joe on the left and mine on the right!




On down the coast the drive is very cool.  Sand dunes on both sides of you an the water just on the other side.  You get glimpses of it through the sand dunes. The cool thing is that this is just a narrow strip of land with the ocean then sand dunes then the road then sand dunes and finally the sound on the other side.

Then we come to the town of Rodanthe, this is where the movie Nights in Rodanthe was filmed.  We had lunch here.  It has been a long time since I have seen this movie so not sure I recognize the town, we will have to watch the movie again.

Once done with lunch we head to the last light house for today.  This is at Cape Hatteras.  I was in for a real shock when we bought our tickets for this lighthouse, it has 248 steps.  WOW, 219 was bad enough.  Luckily they have 8 landings you can stop and rest on.  This is equivalent to a 12 story building. It stands 210 ft tall and is the second tallest brick lighthouse in the world and was built in 1870.  This is the second lighthouse to be built here.  The fist 2900 feet to the south of where this one stands.  The Outer Banks are actively moving as the ocean pushes the sand inward.  It was described as like a log rolling very slowly.  The ocean was encroaching on the site of the original lighthouse so it had to be moved. So in 1999 they actually moved the whole structure standing up, 2900 ft to the north where it stands today. It was quite the process to move it and took I think 23 days.  They put it on some type of rollers and used these big hydraulic pistons to push it, when it reach the end of the rollers they dissembled them from behind and moved them to the front to move again.

I really liked this lighthouse, but my favorite of the three we have seen was the Currituck Beach Lighthouse that we saw yesterday.  It being all brick and the setting gave it a different feel, but of the two we saw today I liked this last on the best.                                                                                           

 Before we head back home we stopped at the beach by the lighthouse and took a little stroll. A nice relaxing way to end the day.

 Joe discovered sand crabs that bury themselves in the sand.

Once back at the park we have dinner and watch Nights in Rodanthe.  It was fun to watch it again and see the sand dunes we drove through and many other land marks we had just seen.  What a great day!!!