WEDNESDAY – 9-15-10 BIG SUR LIGHTHOUSE

Today we make plans to go on a tour of the Big Sur Lighthouse.  Both of us have driven past it for year on Highway 1 and have wanted to take a tour.  We decide on the 2:00 tour which means we need to be there by 1:00 – first come, first serve, no reservations.

We spend a leisure morning hanging around the campsite.  Fred grills bacon outdoors and I mix up a batch of pancakes – good old Bisquick.  We smother our pancakes in real honest-to-goodness maple syrup and crunch on the crispy bacon.

We reach the gate to the lighthouse a little before 1:00.  A few cars are already waiting in line.  We begin to have second thoughts about the tour – the wind is blowing and huge whitecaps dot the coast.  Around 2:00 the volunteer docent greets us and opens the gate.  We drive to the foot of the huge rock and park the van.  We join the group and begin the trek up the half-mile narrow road that leads to the top. People fight their way up the hill, their clothes flapping like test dummies in a wind tunnel. 

Once in a while we stop and listen to the guide’s points of interest:  a shipwreck in 1894, the trials of getting food and water to the families stationed on the rock, but most interesting of all is her story of an aircraft carrier that sank not far off the coast.  I am imagining this huge aircraft carrier at the bottom of the sea when she tells us the aircraft carrier was a dirigible built in the 1930s named the “Macon”.  This huge blimp actually transported Sparrowhawks, light-weight aircraft that she raised and lowered on a hook.  The Sparrowhawks would return to the “Macon” and the pilot would hook-up the aircraft like a trapeze artist grasping a swinging bar.  Can you picture such a thing?  You have to see the actual films in the Visitor Center to believe it.  In 1935 she sank just off the coast and only two people were lost out of the 80 on board.  As you can imagine, she was the last of the aircraft carrier dirigibles.

This is a view of the parking lot from the top of the rock:

Our guide gives us a tour of the lighthouse, the tower, the master’s quarters and the old barn once used by the original inhabitants.  The tour ends with some films in the Visitor Center.  We walk the steep, winding half-mile back to the van and leave the lighthouse parking lot around 5:00. 

We are too tired from the cold wind and three-hour tour to continue to Garrapata Beach as planned.  Instead, we return to the campground and enjoy a relaxing evening around the campfire.  Dinner is a can of Chicken Enchilada soup and quesadillas - simple and easy.  Lights out around 9:30 pm.