Success! The Shropshire rock is in the car. I earned my granola and coffee this morning.
We checked the tidetable and headed into Crescent City and Battery Point Lighthouse. The lighthouse is on a tiny island, but as long as you visit when the tide is low you can just walk across a little beach.
It’s an oddity on the Pacific Coast, a Cape Code style lighthouse where the keeper’s house is built around the light. Most of our lights stand beside their houses.
We timed it right and didn’t even get wet crossing the sand (not even me with my typical nonlinear movement. Rock! Seaweed! Thing!).
When the Battery Point Light was decommissioned, the property was transferred to the historical society. Volunteers live there now, a couple weeks at a time. I think the house has never been vacant. Kind of neat.
It’s a sweet little house with interior walls that curve around the light. Cozy. Some of the volunteers were more eager than accurate and some dwelt on odd details like the framed hair weavings. The upstairs living quarters was an odd mix of period furnishings, two barcaloungers and a TV.
We went up the light and looked out. It still functions as an auxillary light, so volunteers work to clean all the glass and keep things running.
I bought a copy of The Extraordinary Voyage of the Kamome: A Tsunami Boat Comes Home, written by Lori Dengler and Amya Miller and illustrated by Amy Uyeki. This sweet picture book tells the true story of a Japanese high school’s boat that ended up in Crescent City a few years after a tsunami. School kids from both countries got to know each other as the California kids restored the boat and eventually returned it to Japan. My copy is going to Kiyoko and Anthony.
We seem to have left the cameras, and even phones at home, though I clearly remember taking pictures. hmmmm.
We met neighboring campers at lunch. They’re attracted to pubs too.