More from Campobello Island

Hi everyone. Today I have a lot to show you, starting with my latest piece for Rosie's circle challenge over at Art Journal Journey.

This page is almost all hand painted, with a little stamping and doodling. There are lots of doodled circles in the center of the flowers. These are my circles for the challenge. Hopefully its enough circles to fit the theme.:)

 Rosie's challenge goes through the end of the week so you still have time to join in with your own circle page.

I also have some more photos to show you from my recent extended weekend journey. Yesterday I showed you some photos of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's summer home on Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada, right off the coast of Maine. If you want a brief visit to the Roosevelt summer home you can check out my post T This Week is Formal.

I will show you more of this house another day, but I want to show you this interesting lighthouse we visited on the opposite end of the island from the Roosevelt home.

This is East Quoddy Light  in a town called Wilson's Beach.  

Where you might ask is the lighthouse? You can just barely make out its red top off in the distance in the approximate center of the photo. 

So to visit and tour the lighthouse, you have to climb down a ladder onto the first stretch of beach, cross this rocky beach and then climb up another ladder  onto the little island between the mainland and the island the lighthouse sits on, then go down a ladder off of this island and approach the lighthouse's island over another small stretch of beach.

Notice I've used the word island. The lighthouse can only be reached in a 4 hour window around low tide, two hour before low tide and then 2 hours after low tide. After that the water comes in and it is impossible to pass from one little rocky island to the other and then back to the mainland.

They tell you this too with this sign in the parking area.

This area of Maine/Canada is at the base of the Bay of Fundy. If you don't know the Bay of Fundy has the world's biggest tidal change. In some places further up into the Bay there is a 60 foot (18 meter) difference between low and high tide water levels. The tide changes here were very dramatic even though we weren't that far up into the bay. Of course the fact that we had a full moon also meant the tides would be lower and higher than usual.

Although none of the ladders were really high, they were high enough, and steep too.

 This ladder  brought us back up to the mainland. 

And this ladder brought us up onto the island between the mainland and the lighthouse island.

It was pretty exciting.

You could finally see the lighthouse when you reached the peak first island. To get out to the lighthouse you had to cross this rocky and seaweed covered little beach.

East Quoddy Light is one of the few wooden lighthouses still standing. It was opened around 1831. It also goes by the name Head Harbour Lighthouse. It was manned and in use until 1986 when the Canadian Coast Guard decided to close it down. It was in disrepair when a group of both Canadian and American lighthouse lovers bought it for $1. However this was in 2000 so by this time a lot of work was needed to repair the structure.

Two of those people were there to give tours. Our tour guide was a retired man from Pennsylvania in the US. He had so many fascinating stories to tell. Each one of the renovators got to pick a room to fix up. Our guide fixed up the keeper's office and every item he included had something to do with the lighthouse's story. 

For example, the cross on the light house is called St. George's cross. St. George supposedly slayed the dragon, so one item he had in the office was a rocking chair with twin dragons carved into the back.  He had some other clever pieces with stories like this one.

Here's some views in the lighthouse, starting with the dining room in the home at the base where the keep er and  his family lived.

 Here's the  actual light.

 And the cool crackle pattern in the old paint around the windows in the top lantern room.

 I'm not sure what this is, but it was at the very top of the lantern room.

 And a view out of a window part way up the lighthouse.

And from outside.

 Here's the view from the lighthouse top of how we needed to walk to get back to the mainland. You can just see the cars in the parking lot back on the main island.

It was a really cool little hike and a unique way get to a lighthouse. We were lucky to get there just at the right time to make the walk out, since we weren't planning our day around the walk out and back. I would definitely say this experience was one of the highlights of my trip.

Hope you enjoyed the views and story.

Thanks for stopping by.