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Fire Island Lighthouse

Originally uploaded by etacar11

Yes, the weather held up for us. We had only three stops left on the second day and we finished easily.

The seventh stop of the challenge was Old Field Point Lighthouse. Apparently they used to bus people to this stop. This year we drove right to it. Through a quite lovely neighborhood that my mom went ga-ga over. She had decided that the Hamptons were too snobby, too remote, and too lacking in fast-food restaurants. Old Field, with its lovely yards and gardens and beautiful homes, I think she could take. Old Field Point was climbable, even for my parents, and had a nice view of Long Island Sound.

Huntington Harbor Lighthouse was the eighth stop and we actually reached it by boat. It rests on a caisson and has its own dock. So we were able to explore this lighthouse, unlike the other off-shore ones. We all brought our coats with us but the weather was still being mild and we hardly needed them. The people working on preserving the lighthouse had many interesting stories to tell about its history. There was a picture of someone (a keeper’s family member) with a cat at the lighthouse. I’ll bet that cat moved there under extreme duress.

The ninth and final stop of the challenge was Fire Island Lighthouse.  This lighthouse is part of Fire Island National Seashore and reachable from Robert Moses State Park.  I had actually been to the state park before to go to the beach but had realized you could visit the lighthouse from there.  Fire Island was the tallest of the lighthouses on the challenge, I think.  I climbed it, my parents sat it out.  It had already been a bit of a hike from the state park parking lot.  And the climb was a little on the tough side.  I took breaks on the landings and looking up it seemed like I would never reach the top.  But I did, finally, and the view was tremendous.

The rain started as we left the parking lot for our trip home.  Perfect timing!  The drive home wasn’t much fun, but all-in-all, it was a fun trip.  Now my mom is excited to try the Maryland and New Jersey challenges.  We’ll see!

Montauk Point Lighthouse
Originally uploaded by etacar11

My parents and I are doing the Long Island Lighthouse Challenge this weekend. The drive up from Maryland was the worst. First, it rained ALL DAY. And the timing made us hit NYC at rush hour. NYC + Friday + rush hour + rain = a very horrific time. Plus my mom’s allergies were acting up. I felt so bad for her. We finally made it to our hotel near MacArthur Airport several hours after we expected to. And we got lost trying to find it. GPS isn’t always your friend!

But today made up for it, for the most part. Sunny and mostly clear all day. Lovely. Our first stop on the Challenge was the farthest out, Montauk Point Lighthouse. A bit pricey, you have to pay to park, plus to get into the lighthouse. But the view was nice and it was not a bad climb to the top.

The second stop was Cedar Island Lighthouse. It was out on a long, thin strip of sand that would have taken a long time to walk out on. So we just viewed it from a far. Maybe some other time, because it looked like a great walk.

Two ferries got us to the third stop, East End Seaport Museum in Greenport, NY. Ok, not a lighthouse but it’s part of the challenge. They have a lot of nice lighthouse memorabilia.

The fourth stop was Long Beach Bar Lighthouse, also viewed from afar. There was a man from the East End museum at the viewing spot who gave us a nice little history of the lighthouse. Apparently you used to be able to walk to it via a sand bar, but due to various reasons (including rising sea levels) they no longer connect. It’s no longer even that safe to visit it by boat. They make people get their own insurance if they want to do that…

The fifth stop was two lighthouses-in-one. Plum Island and Orient Point Lighthouses, both off-shore, were viewed from Orient Point County Park, right near a very cool-looking ferry that goes to New London, Conn. We had a 15 minute walk to a little beach to see the lighthouses. My parents didn’t make it all the way to the end of the path, but I went most of the way.

Our sixth and last top of the day was Horton Point Lighthouse. This one was NOT off-shore and since it isn’t a tall one, it was an easy climb. One of the guides said that the lighthouse is often included in winery bus tours. They make sure the tours come to the lighthouse BEFORE the wineries. Yeah, last thing you need is a bunch of drunks climbing up 27 steep spiral steps!

I got a U.S. Lighthouse Society passport at Montauk, and got it stamped at each stop. They also gave us souvenir magnets at each stop. Very nice. We have three more lighthouses we are going to try to see tomorrow before we head home. I just hope the weather holds up…

There was an interesting post on Wired magazine’s blog: Is the All-in-One Personal Website Headed for Extinction? I have to admit mine is rapidly (though I seriously need to update and redo it at the moment) becoming just a collection of links to my presences on other sites. Though this blog is hosted on my domain, all my photos are on Flickr, my bookmarks are on Del.icio.us, my resume is on Linked In. Heck, I’m even thinking about trying Twitter. What is the world coming to??

South Mountain Creamery calf

Originally uploaded by etacar11

A dairy farm in Middletown, Maryland, near my family’s house, was having a festival last weekend. They called it the Cow Caper. I was amazed at how many people were there, but coverage of the festival in the Washington Post must have been a big part of it.

The highlights were seeing cows getting milked (weird machines actually suck it out of them), a horse-and-buggy ride, sampling the Creamery’s ice cream, and seeing calves like this. Very cute.

One of my co-workers lent me an interesting book recently. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug. It’s a short and easy read. The basic premise (and hence the title) is that you shouldn’t make the user work too hard to use or understand your website. I think the website I maintain at work, the AA Dept. website, does pretty well in that regard. And even if someone can’t find what they want, we have a link to the sitemap and a searchbox on every page. Hopefully that cuts down on user frustration.

Another usability rule Krug has is “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” I don’t think we can really apply that to our site. There’s no way to really cut down our explanations of various astronomical phenomena and algorithms.

In the next-to-last chapter, he mentions his three-second accessibility test for websites: increasing the size of the type. And he says almost every site he goes to fails. Ta-da! We don’t. You can increase the size of our type with your browser, no problem! Cool. Must be because I love Cascading Style Sheets to death.

Reading – The Pagoda

Originally uploaded by etacar11

My friend Rob took me on a whirlwind tour of all the places he’s lived. This meant visits to York, Reading, and Mechanicsburg, PA. Not exactly places with great sightseeing, but he had told me about the pagoda on the mountain overlooking Reading. So we checked it out.

The view of the city was nice, though it was an overcast day. And it was cold and windy. And there were loud, annoying kids running around. If I ever get back to Reading and the weather is nicer, I will have to check it out again.

The Pagoda sits on Mount Penn, and the road leading up to it has a series of sharp turns. Early automobiles were tested there by Charles Duryea.  We just had to deal with the aforementioned annoying kids, who hogged the road with their bikes on the way back down.

My mom and I have been doing the Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization’s Walk to Empower for the past couple of years. The first two were at Bull Run Regional Park in Centreville, Virginia. This year the walk, which takes place on Mother’s Day (May 11th, 2008), is moving to the National Mall. It’s 3 miles and non-competitive, which is about all my mom and I can handle.

This walk means a lot to me, because my mom had breast cancer when I was 4.  It’s coming up on 30 years since she beat the disease.  I can’t even begin to imagine what my life would have been like if she hadn’t.

Donations:

• My page
• My mom’s page

I have a not-so-secret ambition to see all the National Parks in the Lower 48 states. And I’m a total sucker for historical sites, especially those to do with the American Revolution. Now, what about the rest of the world?

I probably won’t get the chance to see all the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in my lifetime, but it’s still fun to dream. And I’ve already seen a few.

• Historic District of Old Quebec – Went to the city on a high school trip, I think we wandered through it.
• Paris, Banks of the Seine – Yep, train trip to Paris when my family lived in Madrid in the early Eighties.
• Vatican City – On our trip to Rome, also when we lived in Madrid.
• Piazza del Duomo, Pisa – We had to do the funny pictures where it looks like you are holding up the Leaning Tower with your hands.
• Historic Centre of Rome – That Rome trip.
• Venice – We went there twice when we lived in Madrid.
• Pompeii – I was terrified that Vesuvius was going to erupt while we were there (Hey, I was about seven years old at the time).
• Monastery and Site of the Escurial, Madrid – Well, duh.
• Old Town of Avila – It’s not far from Madrid.
• Historic City of Toledo – One of my favorite day trips from Madrid, I think we did it more than once.
• Tower of London – We took the plane to London when we lived in Madrid (all our other trips were by car).
• Independence Hall – Philly? It’s practically next door. I’ve been there twice!
• Mammoth Cave National Park – My grandfather was from Kentucky, so we went there once so my dad could do genealogical investigations.
• Statue of Liberty – What a horrific trip, love the statue but it definitely was not worth it.

Hmmm, still so many to see…

Clara Barton House

Originally uploaded by etacar11

Montgomery County does have some lovely historical sites. For a long time I had wanted to see the Clara Barton National Historic Site. My friend Rob wanted to go to Glen Echo Park and the C&O Canal Towpath near there. So this made for a nice little daytrip.

You can only see the inside of the house while on the NP Ranger-led tour. It was just us and a mother and daughter, so that was nice.

Barton lived in the house for the last 15 years of her life and it also served as the headquarters of the American Red Cross (she was its founder) at the time. The central hallway of the house was lined with closets filled with medical supplies ready to be sent to disaster areas/war zones.

Jones Point LighthouseOriginally uploaded by etacar11

Jones Point Lighthouse, in Alexandria, VA. Almost right under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. My mother and I visited it on the 4th of July.

I’ve had a fascination with lighthouses for a while now and I took advantage of the day off to see this local one.

It’s owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the building is not open to the public. Sadly. Maybe they will restore it someday. But it was nice to be able to walk around it.

Located on the grounds of the lighthouse is one of the boundary stones for the original boundries of the District of Columbia. You could only see it from above, though a hole in the seawall. Best viewed from the water, I guess.