Job With a View

What kind of job would give you a view like this from your kitchen window

and a walk down these stairs to get to work?

Well unfortunately, there is no current job that fits that bill.  But from 1889 until 1974, lighthouse keepers and assistants manned the Point Sur Lightstation.  (The lighthouse is now automated.)

They lived on-post on a large rock off of a remote section of California coastline.

Supplies were delivered by boat and carried up the rock by tram.

A schoolhouse, exclusively for the children living at the light station, was a steep walk down the rock followed by almost a mile of walking through a field. 

My friend Kate invited us to join her and her family on a tour of the light station.  (She will probably also be blogging about this, so be sure to check out her blog too.  Click HERE to read Daffodil’s.)

When we pulled up to the station, and I saw on the gate that this was a 3 hour tour, I’m not going to lie – I got a little worried.  I knew that it was a lot of walking (up a BIG rock), and since the tour was starting at 10:00, it would run right into lunchtime.

But guess what – all of the kids did really good!

Trenton loved being able to look through the binoculars that were handed out with the tour.

Just what was Trenton looking for with the binoculars?

Multiple pods of Gray Whales swimming south to calve!  We loved seeing all of the whale spouts!

And seals sunning on the rocks.  We saw some otters in the water too.

Once we got to the lighthouse building, all of the kids had to take turns yelling into a horn that was on display.

 We were able to walk up to the top of the lighthouse, check out the lens, and then go out on the catwalk.

We toured the lighthouse keepers house, looked through the gift shop/museum, and took in the beautiful views.

We were very fortunate that the weather was nice for our tour.  The guides went on and on about how rare today’s nice weather was.  They talked of how they used to carry around a wind gauge on tours – until it broke measuring 70mph+ winds on a tour one day.  Apparently it can get really windy on the rock!  And there was no fog today!  If you’ve ever driven Hwy 1 along the Big Sur coast, you know that fog is almost always what the forecast dishes up.  But today was crystal clear!  Lovely!

Thanks, Kate, for inviting us out today.  We had a wonderful time!