Camping | Thacher Island

On Monday afternoon Bob (my brother in law) and I paddled out to Thacher Island and saw a sign that said "campground". We immediately went into planning mode. Missy was cool enough to offer to stay behind with the kids for a night while Bob, Alli and I scrambled together enough camping gear in the dry bags (and garbage bags) we had and kayak back out to the island.

We left at 7:30 and it was getting dark quick. An intense paddle got us to the island just in time and the couple who are inn keepers were cool enough to not only reopen the boat house for us, but also to pull a trailer around for us and drive our gear to the campsite. We set up camp just before dark, loaded on the bug spray and explored the island.

The first thing we did was to walk around to the inland side of the island, call home and confirmed that we could blink flashlights at each other and it was visable. Our morse code was really rusty so we stuck to talking on the cell phone. We then explored around the island (navigating around the worlds largest Sea Gulls (some looked to have 3 ft wingspans). Walking around they were cat sized. Freeky; Anyway, the Inn keepers had left the lighthouse unlocked for us, so we went up to it and took some pictures of the cool, though creepy entrance. We then marched up the 137 stairs (Alli counted) and got within feet of the red light. The view was amazing. The moon was shining bright and the waves were crashing down below.

The highlight of the trip for all of us came when we went down the top ten stairs and noticed what we had not before: A door. I opened it to find an outer door. Opening that reavealed to us the walkway around the top of the lighthouse. It was adrenalin pumping, wind blowing, exposure that was so cool. The moonlight was fascinating. It made me think of Psalm 19: A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.

We got back down to camp, had a quick snack and settled in for a good nights rest. Worked out great until at 12:15, something triggered the two, very loud fog horn systems on the island. The two horns had different pitches and sequences and seemed to go off ever 15-30 seconds for a good majority of the night. See Gulls also added to the volume factor- so that answered the question we had earlier in the night of "Why would we be the only ones here? this is amazing" But we would do it again in a heartbeat.

The noise had us up at 5 am and up in the top of the lighthouse again for sunrise. The paddle back home was smooth and wonderful and much more restful without a pending darkness.

There are some pictures posted on the Picasa site. Photos