Well, as I mentioned in the intro post for the Wandering Fireball category, my wife Carol went to Ireland a few weeks ago. She will hopefully be putting up a series of posts on that trip soon. But to tide us over while shes sorting through photos I thought I would write a post about the journey I took while she was away.
Since Carol was away I decided that over the weekend while I was alone I would take place in the New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge. The goal of the challenge is to visit 13 participating lighthouses. For each lighthouse you visit they give you a souvenir button. If you finish the Challenge you get a plastic completion tag. Also if you do a night climb at one of the places you also get a night climb tag. The lighthouses in the Challenge are located on both the Atlantic coast and the Delaware River. They range in height and power from small metal columns with little lights at the top to large concrete structures that loom over the skylines and have giant lights.
So after researching the locations of the houses I decided to try to make the eight hour trip in one day. I began my journey at 6:00 am getting up before the sun to get breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts and head to the first lighthouse in Tinicum, New Jersey. When I got to Tinicum I signed up for the Challenge and got my first button. I also bought a lanyard to hold my buttons and a lighthouse passport. The passport can get stamps at many lighthouses across the United States, including all the lighthouses on the challenge sights. If you fill the passport you can send it in to get a patch. The rest of the trip went rather smoothly; I only hit traffic around Atlantic City and the construction around Sandy Hook. The one interesting trip was that the Twin Lights lighthouse which is a large stone structure on the top of a hill around the Sandy Hook area. The structure is built on this small area so there is no parking around it. You have to park instead at a nearby school and walk through the woods to get there. All in all it was an enjoyable trip. For anyone interested there is a similar event in Long Island and Maryland.
~Chris Baldi The Healer~
~October 29, 2008~