Candle on the water

Magnet #926 - Lighthouses of Maine

As I type this, I'm sitting on the slowest moving train known to man (I could seriously run faster, ya'll), on the last leg of my three-week sabbatical home.

Looks like that layoff was some damned good timing, since I ended up having to chauffeur my parents up and down the east coast for my dad's eye surgery. First the surgery, then the week-after follow-up. And, in another two weeks another follow-up roadtrip.

So this trip included:

• One train trip from NYC to NC
• One roadtrip from NC to Boston, with an overnight stopover in NYC
• One roadtrip from Boston to NC, with an overnight stopover in NYC
• One "roadtrip" to Raleigh to have some fun with a former client and friend
  
• One roadtrip from NC to Boston, with an hour stopover in NYC and a rather profitable side trip to Mohegan Sun
• One roadtrip from Boston to NC, with a detour through New Hampshire, Vermont, and an overnight stopover in NYC
• One train trip from NC to NYC
  

Whew. I Tweeted it, but dang, did I make the 85/95 corridor my bitka!

I picked up this magnet at a Hannaford's in York, Maine, when it was becoming clear that I wouldn't be able to see any lighthouses of Maine. In fact, I'd mentally written up the whole lighthouse magnetpost to be how of course I went to Maine and didn't see a lighthouse.

The next morning, though, we decided to take a quick oceanside jaunt, and just before a fabulous breakfast at Sandy's Purple Palace, we stumbled to Nubble Lighthouse. It's on an island, next to a look-out promontory - so gorgeous. Hurricane Earl helped us out with a strong surf, so it was very cool to see it with busy waves hitting the shores.

The lighthouse and its outerbuildings were very much like a Hopper painting and I couldn't stop taking pictures, just trying to capture the right shadows of the towers on the lawn.

Or, you know, waiting for the gift shop to open.

eta:
I have this strange urge to see Pete's Dragon now. And I haven't been able to stop singing It's Not Easy or Candle on the Water, ever since. And I can't stop trying to say Passamaquaddy, either.

It sounds rather strange

Magnet #726 - Chesapeake Bay, Hooper Strait

The AGE10 brought this back for me, from a roadtrip they did to Maryland. It's the Hooper Strait Lighthouse that's been there since about 1879 - signaling the entry of Hooper Strait.

It's one of those screwpile lighthouses, because it has iron pilings with a screw at the bottom that dig down into the soft ground about 10 feet or so. Mind you, I just had to look that up, because I had no idea that they had lighthouses that screw into the grown. In my neck of the woods, we had all those towery North Carolina lighthouses.

All day, though, while I've been thinking of using this magnet for today, all I can think of is Disney's Pete's Dragon, which takes place in Maine, in and around a lighthouse.

And, in my head, all I hear is that It's Not Easy song with Helen Reddy and that ginger-haired kid playing Pete. Which, I guess in the grand scheme of things is easier to hear in my head than Candle on the Water.