Hi Everyone!
Today was a busy day for me, I spent much of the day at the lighthouse, I worked at the base of the lighthouse, as a "floater" inside the lighthouse, and at the top of the lighthouse. At the base you greet the visitors who are climbing and give them a safety talk before they climb. My boss let me give the safety talk 2 times by the end of the day! That's pretty exciting because I am still not wearing my uniform, so he had to introduce me as a ranger in training. When you are a floater, you are inside the lighthouse on one of the landings, usually about 1/2 way up the lighthouse. The floaters job is to keep an eye on the people who are climbing and help them in any way as they go. Since it can get hot inside the lighthouse, the heat index while I was in it was 91 degrees, the floater ranger also watches to make sure no one becomes ill while they are climbing. The ranger at the top of the lighthouse answers questions that the visitors have once they reach the top and points out things of interest in the view. I have 2 pictures to show you regarding that view: the first one illustrates how narrow the Outer Banks can be. If you look at this picture, you see the Pamlico Sound on the left side, a narrow strip of land (with the one road) in the middle, and the Atlantic Ocean on the right side. Imagine what happens to these narrow strips when a hurricane comes through and churns up the ocean waves! Do the waves wash over the road? They sure do!
The second picture I took shows the path the lighthouse took when they moved it in 1999, Yes! They moved the lighthouse! I will have to do at least a whole blog entry on the move, if not more. But, to get started, you can tell in this picture the path the lighthouse took by looking at the cleared out space below. Part of the cleared area was turned into a parking lot. If you follow the cleared path to the top of the picture, that is the spot where the lighthouse stood from 1870 until 1999.
How close is Kitty Hawk and Corolla to where you are located??? We are visiting there later this summer, any lighthouses you would recommend in that area??
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