East Point Lighthouse: A Lesser-Known New Jersey Lighthouse

 The design of this lighthouse pleases me. The two-story keeper's quarters below seem like they'd be pleasant enough, and the trip to the actual light would be easy enough even carrying a bucket of whale oil. It is isolated still with salt marsh and bay all around, ideal for a person who enjoys solitary pursuits such as writing, reading, sewing, photographing, blogging. Okay, so we don't use whale oil anymore, but we also don't have keepers living at the light. I'm just daydreaming, looking for my next big career.

East Point Lighthouse (1849)

 East Point Lighthouse is less than an hour north and west from Cape May in a car, and even less if you take a boat or plane. It's on the bayside, and was deemed necessary in 1849 to guide sailors into the Maurice River. It was called the Maurice River Lighthouse until 1913. In 1842 it was outfitted with a sixth-order Fresnel lens and received its modern lens in 1980. It is the second-oldest lighthouse in New Jersey (after Sandy Hook). The Maurice River Historical Society was formed in 1971 with the goal of restoring the lighthouse, and that renovation is still going on.

East Point Lighthouse from the other side

We did not get to climb this light as it is only open on the third Sunday of the month from 1:00-4:00 or some such limited hours. Instead, we walked around and shot photos of the building, the bay, and the marshy surroundings. We had an idea of a picnic, but ultimately ran to the car swatting at bugs: biting ones, ugly ones, invisible ones. Oh. My. Gosh. Don't forget the bug spray if you go. This place is why they invented bug spray.

My Ring-Necked Pheasant (and MINIwindshield wiper)

On a brighter note, as we were leaving we spotted a very distinctive game bird. We couldn't identify the thing (we specialize in shore birds) but later found it in the field guide: a Ring-Necked Pheasant. I didn't score a super-clear photo, but National Geographic did: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/ring-necked-pheasant/.




As I mentioned, East Point Lighthouse is situated near a marsh. I photographed this wooden structure on our previous trip when the grasses were brown (it was November), and here is how it looked this week (August).

Tumble-down shack in the marsh near the East Point Lighthouse

The Full Moon Climb (Cape May Lighthouse)

The Cape May Point Lighthouse at dusk

If your calendar is the kind that shows the phases of the moon, you will see that tonight the moon is full. The full moon has been romanticized over the years, but what does it really mean to you? Maybe it explains odd behavior of coworkers, customers, and offensive drivers on this day, but can you think of anything else? Wolfmen, maybe? Well, if you are in Cape May, NJ, during this summer season the full moon signals an opportunity to climb the Cape May Lighthouse at night by the light of the moon!

Steps, steps, and more steps (199 to be exact)

Porthole window

I couldn't resist the opportunity this evening even though the skies were cloudy and the moon did not actually make an appearance. It was a fun climb, though I suspect an extra fifty or so cast-iron steps were added to the original 199 since I climbed last year. (Is that possible?) I stopped off at each window along the way to shoot pictures and breathe a little. Did you know that windows were placed facing different directions to catch the sun at various times of the year? It's more obvious in the Cape May Light than some others that the thickness between the inner and outer walls gradually gets smaller closer to the top. It's easiest to see this at the windows. There's about six feet between the inner and outer brick walls at the base, and up where the round porthole style windows are the walls come together (almost--the wall is about twelve inches thick there).

I'm pleased with the shots I got from the windy deck at the top of the light tonight, experimenting with various settings and buttons on my camera for nighttime shooting.Check them out:

That's St. Mary's retreat for nuns with the Delaware Bay behind. Rumor has it civilians can retreat there, too. Who's in?

This is the town of Cape May Point under a tempestuous sky. That's the Delaware Bay back there.

That's the bird sanctuary in the center, the WWII bunker to the right on the beach, the City of Cape May in the background, and the Atlantic Ocean to the right in back.

This one is a little blurry, but I like it anyway. I was using the roof of my car to steady the camera, but it didn't work as well as my tripod would have...if I had thought to bring it.

NJ Lighthouse Crawl

Every year, I say I'm going to participate in the New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge in October, and every year I don't. October is a very busy month for me, and I just can't seem to fit it in. This year, Fred, Gladys, and I decided to make our own challenge on Thanksgiving weekend. We thought we'd hit all the oceanside lighthouses from Sandy Hook in the north to Hereford Inlet (North Wildwood) in the south on Day One, hang out in Cape May for Day Two, and then travel north on starting at Cape May (at the confluence of the ocean and Delaware Bay), visiting the three bayside lighthouses. (That's the East Point Lighthouse in Heislerville, on the bay, at the top of this post.)

Unfortunately, Fred had to go to work on the morning of Day One, and I hadn't considered that the days are short and we'd lose daylight around 4:30. This was important because I had planned to photograph each lighthouse even if I didn't climb them. The Day One plan was spread over Day One and Day Two, and there was a lot of extra driving. On the positive side, we enjoyed traveling the Ocean Drive in the off-season through some of the shore towns we don't often visit. Gladys was thrilled that all of the lighthouses were dog-friendly this time of year except Hereford Inlet in North Wildwood. This is because they have a pretty awesome garden and prefer to regulate the fertilizer that goes in it.

So we visited the eleven lighthouses: Sandy Hook, Twin Lights (Navesink), Sea Girt, (Day One); Hereford Inlet, Absecon, Tucker's Island, Barnegat (Day Two); and Cape May, East Point, Finn's Point, and Tinicum (Day Three). I photographed all and climbed none. At the beginning, we borrowed the term 'challenge' for our adventure, but about halfway through changed that to 'crawl' (see the title of this post). Red and green words in this post are hyperlinks, by the way.

STUFF I LEARNED

• Sandy Hook is famous not merely for its nude beach, but also for its lighthouse, the oldest in the United States (1764) and occupied by the British during the Revolutionary War.
• The Absecon and Barnegat (pictured below) lighthouses were designed by the same engineer, Brigadeer General George Meade who later distinguished himself at the Battle of Gettysburg.
• The Absecon Lighthouse is only steps away from the Showboat Casino in Atlantic City, and is New Jersey's tallest lighthouse with 228 steps.
• The exoskeletal Finn's Point (pictured below) and and Tinicum lighthouses are rear range lighthouses, and each was used with another light. Ships' navigators would line up the two lights to make sure they were on course to enter a channel, river, or harbor.

• Cape May is still my favorite.