Jerry & Elizabeth's 1999 Lighthouse Trip

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It was a very ambitious trip.  We planned to see almost 20 lighthouses on the East Coast and Chesapeake Bay in less than 2 weeks.  4 Days of that was planned for Washington DC.  Could we do it ?

We did visit 15 of the lighthouses we planned to see, not bad, we thought.  We even extended our stay in DC by a day so we could see more museums. 

We started our lighthouse trip by driving to Moorhead City, NC the first day out.  We got there before sunset so we drove up the road a way to see Beaufort, NC.  What a great town.  Elizabeth loved it. 

The next day we took the ferry boat at Cedar Island, NC, to the Island of Ocracoke.   First  stop was the Ocracoke Lighthouse.  Another ferry boat ride put us on the Hatteras National Seashore where we eventually made our way to the Cape Hatteras, NC, Lighthouse.  The lighthouse is in the process of being moved.  You couldn't get real close.  The photos and articles on   this Website show you much more than you can see in person, still it's great to be there.  From there we drove to the Bodie Island, NC, Lighthouse, just over a really cool bridge over the Oregon Inlet.   I was told that years ago, a boat hit the bridge and cars spilled into the water.  It's a very tall bridge.  You wouldn't want to fall off of it in a car.  We got there kind of late and the museum/gift shop was closed.  Too bad, because it looked like a really great place.  The Bodie Island lighthouse looks really good.  An extra good job has been done restoring it. 

Next stop was Corolla NC, and the Lighthouse on Currituck Island.   A beautifully restored lighthouse and one of the best gift shops we went in.   The Cape Henry Lighthouses, both Old and New were next.   Then a drive over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.   I've wanted to drive over this 17 mile bridge since I was 9 years old and finally got to do it.  It was kind of a letdown after all these years of anticipating it. 

We went over to the Atlantic coast of Maryland to stay in Ocean City Maryland at The Lighthouse Club Hotel, a very luxurious hotel modeled after a screw pile lighthouse.  While we were over in that part of the state we saw the Fenwick Island lighthouse, just over the border in Delaware, and the Assateague Lighthouse.

The Hooper Strait Lighthouse at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michael's Maryland was next.  We spent a lot of time there and thought St. Michael's was a really nice town, easily our second favorite of the trip. 

Next stop was Havre de Grace Maryland and the Concord Point Lighthouse.  Elizabeth lived about a mile from this lighthouse in 1973 and got a real charge out of seeing it. 

We met a few of members of the  The Chesapeake Chapter of the US Lighthouse Society at the Havre de Grace, Concord Point Lighthouse, the afternoon we were visiting it.  I had an opportunity to thank them personally for the great work their club has done with it's web site.   The Chesapeake Chapter of the US Lighthouse Society web site provided us with very detailed instructions to most of the lighthouses we visited on the Chesapeake Bay, and great background information and photos. 

The Lightship Chesapeake, Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse and the Baltimore Inner Harbor were the next stops on our tour.  

With only one day left before we were to arrive in Washington DC, we left Baltimore and headed toward Annapolis were we came across this fake lighthouse at a shopping center, truly one of the weirdest things we saw on our trip. 

On that last day we drove about 350 miles and saw The Sandy Point Shoals Lighthouse in the Northern Chesapeake bay, The Cove Point Lighthouse, The Drum Point Lighthouse and the Calvert Marine Museum, The Lighthouse at Point Lookout with it's smoke-house and the Observation Station located there, and finally to the spectacular Old Fort Washington and The Old Fort Washington Lighthouse complex just outside Washington DC on the Potomac river.

We finished up our vacation in Washington DC visiting as many museums as we could.  Then drove home as fast as we could.

Hope you enjoy seeing these lighthouses as much as we did.

Thanks for visiting our Website.

Jerry and Elizabeth Perlman