Tybee Island Light

Jessa and I were in Savannah last month, visiting with good friends from my university days. From a spacious flat on Broughton Street downtown, we spent several days enjoying this very walkable coastal city's beautiful neighbourhoods and waterfront, Low Country cuisine, and a fine selection of wines. (Jeff is a sommelier, and generously volunteered to arrange a private tasting based on our own tastes, and pushing the envelope a bit.) A wonderful visit, but mostly not intended as fodder for the blog.

Partly because Jessa was experiencing double vision during our trip (nothing to do with the wine), we didn't do much photography in Savannah proper, but I snapped a few shots at Tybee Island Light. Unfortunately,  the lighthouse was closed on the day of our visit—actually, it seemed that just about everything on Tybee was closed on Tuesdays—so all I can offer is external photos.

Tybee Island has had a lighthouse since 1736; the current structure of brick is its fourth iteration. (A more complete history is available at Wikipedia.)

[Boat-tailed grackle on the railing. This is a coastal species, but we see the closely related great-tailed grackle in Nebraska; in fact there's a very reliable location about three miles from our house.]

The keeper's house dates to the early 1880s. Jessa would want me to point out the functional exterior shutters, a must in coastal areas. No architectural feature annoys her more than purely decorative shutters.

Two Harbors

On a slight hill overlooking Agate Bay in the town of Two Harbors, Minnesota, is Two Harbors Light. Built in 1891-1892, the lighthouse is still in service (though it is now listed as a "private aid to navigation" and no longer maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard).

Actually out in Agate Bay is a second lighthouse, Two Harbors East Breakwater Light. This much smaller structure was built in 1906 and remains in official service.

Two Harbors is very much a working harbour, and has been since the late nineteenth century. The boat below, the Edna G., was built in 1896, spent most of her career (except for two years on the East Coast during the First World War) right here in Two Harbors, and at the time of her retirement in 1981 was the last coal-fired, steam-powered tug working on the Great Lakes.

Dwarfing the Edna G. in the photo below are two enormous railway piers (out of sight to the left is a third, now out of service) from which Canadian National Railway cars loaded with taconite dump the iron ore directly into the holds of cargo ships.

At the time of our visit, one such ship, the Arthur M. Anderson, had just finished loading. (The Anderson, incidentally, was the last ship in contact with the Edmund Fitzgerald and the first on the scene to search for survivors.) We watched her (in the West, a ship is always "she" even if named for a male director of U.S. Steel) slowly back out of the dock and laboriously turn...

...then head out past the breakwater lighthouse to Lake Superior, where she remained in sight for at least an hour, headed up the lake toward Thunder Bay.

By some estimates, up to three-quarters of the steel produced by the United States during the Second World War originated in the Iron Ranges of northern Minnesota, ending up in ships, tanks, and airplanes throughout the European and Pacific theatres. So, some pretty significant ore moving through here...

Jessa and I, though, are more inclined to notice other types of natural resources—squirrels, wildflowers, moss and lichen, even rocks without economic or strategic value—so here are some more pictures from Two Harbors. Enjoy.

Parting shots

Sandy Point

Some pictures from Sandy Point State Park near Annapolis, all by Jessa.

Yours truly, fishing from a jetty on the east beach, with Sandy Point Shoal Light in the background.

A better view of the lighthouse, with Sandy Point's signature orange sand.

The orange colour is not a photographic artifact; the native rock is rich in iron ores.

Sandy Point Shoal Light was built in 1883, electrified in 1929, automated in 1963, and finally discontinued as an active lighthouse in 2019. It stands in water less than ten feet deep—the "shoal" of the name, which attracts both fishing boats and fishing birds. Now privately owned, the lighthouse is currently covered in scaffolding and appears to be undergoing needed renovations.

Three marvels of engineering: 

Up the Bay, the Baltimore Harbor Light. Standing at the mouth of the Magothy River, it has been active since 1908 (making it the newest lighthouse on the Chesapeake) and closely resembles the Sandy Point Shoal Light. 

Another look at Sandy Point Shoal Light, and some spectacular Chesapeake Bay clouds.

Just down the Bay, the Bay Bridge. (Hey, I think that's me fishing again.)

Fishing fashion, appropriate to the location: Baltimore Bayhawks cap, sun shirt with rockfish graphics, and Old Bay board shorts.