I started this blog initially because of my love of lighthouses and they were featured quite a bit at the beginning. Then I received all those family letters and my interest in those has superceded many other things. But last weekend I and my neighbors (5 of us women friends) went on a birthday trip for Mary to the Redwoods. What a fun, fun time we had. We rode, talked, ate, toured, relaxed and wined here and there. We five all stayed in one hotel room each night -- Grants Pass, OR; Crescent City, CA and finally Florence, OR on our way home. Beautiful weather, fabulous spring scenes -- so different from home where we got word that it had snowed while we were gone. Fancy that! Talk about being gone at the right time.
One of the highlights for me was a little side trip north of Florence to see the Heceta Head lighthouse. It's not that I don't see it every day as a photo on my office wall, but I'd never before actually seen it in person. Alas, the light had broken (not the fresnel lens, I believe, but some mechanism) and it had been off for a couple of weeks. A store cashier said that apparently if they let it continue operating it would have needed more repairs, so off it went. This is heresay, but as a matter of fact, the light was off. We stopped across the mouth of the river and took the first photos (alas, I had the camera on portrait for some reason) and then we drove over to the parking lot and hiked up the hill to see the lighthouse up close and personal. It was so much fun!
(I also got to see the Yacqina ligthouse from a distance, but as I had been there before I was willing to give up going off the beaten path for that one since not everyone loves lighthouses and wants to stop at every sign.) And, besides, by the end of the trip we were a bit like horses on the way to the barn. Well, that's not quite true. It wasn't the barn at the end of day that was the lure, it was the Woodburn Outlet Mall ~~!
In this photo you can see the edge of the Fresnel lens (which, alas, I didn't get to watch in operation on this trip) as well as the curtain which protects it from the sun during the day. It was nice to see it was being cared for in spite of being off for awhile. There is a lovely former keepers house adjacent to the lighthouse that is a bed and breakfast! It looks fabulous! You can check it out at http://www.hecetalighthouse.com/ I went there and it also says they have a seven course brunch on Easter Sunday and Mother's Day. Well, it looks like we did pick the wrong weekend to visit - altho I can't imagine being away from our families on those two days anyway.
But if we didn't get to eat a seven course breakfast at the lighthouse, we did get to eat clam chowder and other yummy things at Mo's both in Florence and in Newport so we had a culinary delight anyway. I love their garlic cheese bread! And I discovered Mo is a she. Go figure - why else would the food be so good. I don't know what Mo is short for, but likely "MOGNIFICENT"!
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