Today I got to experience something unquestionably wondrous: the exploration of an abandoned lighthouse. The day started with a quick ground briefing of what my instructor and I were going to do. The plan was to take off, fly northwest bound, land on a few lakes, and maybe get some ice cream – awesome! Not long after this, we took off using a glassy water, one ski technique, and were soon on our way. I still can’t get over the power difference between a 185 and a 172; the 185 just pulls you out of the water. Once we were in the air, we headed northwest and began to land in a few lakes along the way. On our second lake landing, my instructor told me about an island that he thought would be an excellent opportunity to learn how to beach the aircraft. I took him up on the experience, and we were once again on our way.
As we approached the island, he pointed out an abandoned lighthouse on the northeastern side – the opposite of where we were going to land. He told me that he had never been to that point and that it would be pretty cool to go explore it. I jumped at his idea, and we both decided that I would park the plane somewhere along the rocky shore. After we made this decision, I dropped down, landed alongside the long island, and began my long slow taxi toward shore. With a cautious eye for hidden obstacles from both of us, I was able to dock the plane next to a wrecked stone pier. I then shut down and proceeded to get into the water as we wanted to rotate the plane around 180° for an easy exit. Once we had accomplished this, we tied the aircraft to a rock and ventured onto the island.
On the island, immediately before the lighthouse, a posted welcome sign stated that anyone was allowed to visit, as long as they did so respectfully – no problem. We climbed up into the lighthouse, and I immediately went all the way to the top; I couldn’t resist it. The views were amazing. My instructor and I then went to explore the rest of the onsite buildings and saw that they were severely vandalized: everything was smashed, painted on, or defaced in one way or another. It’s unfortunate because it was scheduled to be privately restored at some point in the late 1970s, but was abandoned because of the $100 000 price tag to relocate and restore the lighthouse. Even in its current state, it’s still a really cool sight to see – I would definitely go back again to explore some more; I absolutely love this type of stuff. For anyone interested in learning more about the lighthouse, and its history, here is a link to the page where I found the most information about it [lighthousefriends.com].
After about half an hour or so of walking around, we decided to leave and get some ice cream; this would also allow me to practice docking with another style dock. We geared up, taxied out, and took off once again. Before long, we were arriving at our destination and were soon docked yet again. We got out, bought our ice creams, fuelled up, and then we were on our way back to the airport. Today was a ton of fun; I loved it so much – it makes me crave float flying for the adventure that seems to naturally come with it. There is nothing that I love more than flying; absolutely nothing.
