I paid to climb to the top of the
but I didn't get very far, because of the
so I hung around looking at the
instead.
Hubby was much braver,
and was very sweet not to make fun of me.
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If you're using an rss reader and the photos don't show up, they are:
1. St Augustine Lighthouse,
2. Scary see-through spiral staircase at same,
3. Soothing, calming Live Oaks (that would have been whispering, had there been any wind) and
4. View from the parapet.
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Actually I looked at the live oaks prior to any chickening out - they were in the parking lot. Post-chickening, I looked around at the educational exhibits, but I didn't get any photos of those.
I chatted with a park worker who told me that loads of people pay and then don't climb. Really. Happens all the time, she said. Well, yeah! See-through stairs make you dizzy.
12 comments:
How nice to come to your site and see my home town. When we were teens in the 70's, the lighthouse was off limits and the lightkeepers house was a burned out hulk that we dared each other to go into late at night. They've done a wonderful restoration job. The view of Salt Run is lovely, I've caught a lot of fish there and your view shows the area where I recieved my first stingray sting.
I visited St Augustine years ago with my mother, and spent a blissful week there. It was one of my favorite vacations ever, and I fear that I've idealized it in my mind... when we drove through recently, it seemed different than I'd remembered. Lots more people too.
Back then - probably the early 90s - the lighthouse wasn't open.
If there had been an elevator to the top I'd have taken it and enjoyed the view. It's just those dadgum steps that made me dizzy!
Stingray sting? I'll gladly avoid that too. :)
You may have idealized it, but the county has grown so since the time of your last trip, that the changes are real and not the result of a perception...sigh.
I visited St. Augustine years ago right after high school and enjoyed it very much. i would like to go back. On the other subject, I had to climb to the top of a 200 ft. tower crane one time on a job. Those ladders are very small and those crane sway ALOT. I almost got motion sick but I made it to the cab and the operator let me play with the crane for awhile so it was worth it.
Those stairs would scare me to death! Something about open air between steps really gets to me. Great photo though.
As a pup I climbed to the top of the lighthouse on Cape Hatteras, NC. I had to force myself to do that, and the fact that I vividly remember it so many decades later tells me what a challenge it must have been. (When I visited the lighthouse, you could park right next to it. Now, I understand, all of that land is washed away and the lighthouse sits on a rock out in the bay.)
Love the post and pictures. That staircase photograph is magnificent.
Ditto on the staircase pic -- so elegant. Interesting contrast between the geometries of the spiral staircase and the oaks with their seemingly random (but it's not) squigglitude.
Thanks for the excursion!
That lighthouse brings back so many memories for me. My grandparents (dad's side) used to have a house in St. Augustine and we could see the light of the lighthouse above the trees at night. I was less than five years old at the time, mind you, but the memory stuck with me! And then they moved to the St. Johns River, twenty miles away, but coming to town and seeing the lighthouse was still a special thing for me. Glad they've restored it nicely. But no, you would not catch me climbing those see-through stairs to the top! I'm kinda funny that way.
That stairs pic was actually taken by hubby also. I took one like that looking up, but his looking down turned out better, I think.
Annie if I have any tall climbing done, now I know who to call. 200 feet! Good lord. This lighthouse is only 70-something feet tall or so.
Deb I remember so much about my gradfather's house from my childhood - I know what you mean... I get a little misty just thinking about the sound his old grandfather clock made.
Glad to hear I'm not the only one freaked out by those stairs. :)
you aren't alone with the whole see-through stair thing. i really don't like 'em.
now i'm *lucky* enough to have a job that requires me to visit chemical plants on a fairly regular basis - and they usually have stairs AND WHOLE UPPER FLOORS made of holes. i hate it, but i've learned to NOT LOOK DOWN, so i could have made it to the top of the lighthouse, but i wouldn't have been happy about it.
and i would have probably had to spend some time destressing myself with the really cool trees.
Like Pablo, I've done the Hatteras Light from bottom to top (and back, natch). Oddly enough, it has the same pattern as the St. Augustine light. I know N. American lighthouses eventually were given more or less distinct patterns so that one could tell them apart at a five-mile glance, but I'm wondering how often we might see the same pattern along the east coast.
Oh, and the Hatteras light was moved in 1999. Now it's not so close to the drink.
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