Unlike my last To-Do List post, which was something new that I’d just discovered and wanted to get started on, today’s To-Do List post is something that I’m actively working on already.
I grew up in Chicago, which does have a few lighthouses to its credit, and yet for most of my life, lighthouses were something that existed somewhere else. We visited one (I’m pretty sure it was Jupiter Inlet light) during my childhood. I definitely have visited that one during my adulthood. We may have gone to Tybee Island light during one of our trips to Savannah, since we have a postcard of it. I don’t remember it, though.
My interest in lighthouses goes back to 1993 or 1997, depending on how you count. In 1993, when we first got cable, one of the channels we got was the Sci-Fi Channel, and I finally, after about 27 years of hearing about it, got to see the original 1966 Dark Shadows television program. I became a fan instantly. The town where Dark Shadows is set is described as being 50 miles from Bangor, in Hancock County, and on Frenchman’s Bay. So once I had an Internet connection, in 1997, I set out to figure out where, exactly, that would be, and in the process, saw all kinds of photographs of lighthouses. At first, I wanted to see one lighthouse, but then with time I decided that I want to see them all.
Since 1997, every time I visit a place that’s near water, I try to see at least one lighthouse (and if I can climb one, that’s even better). In my 2015 vacation, I got three lighthouses in. The first was the Statue of Liberty, which is no longer a lighthouse, but was one from 1886 until 1902. My second and third were Blackwell Island Light and Jeffrey’s Hook Lighthouse (the subject of the children’s book “The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge”) on our Circle Tour trip (more on the tour in a future post).
I still have never visited a lighthouse in Maine, though.