We put our loot into an artificial tide pool and surveyed our finds:
These rubber boots are awesome for exploring tidepools:
I know this picture is blurry, but it's the best I could get of our little tidepool zoo:
We also found some orange fish eggs of some sort... even Elaine didn't know what they belonged to.
Next up was the Treasure Hunt where we used compasses and pretty realistic-looking piratey treasure maps. This was one of the first times I've actually been successful at explaining how to use a compass. The whole "don't turn the compass turn your body" thing was not working for these kids. Finally I hit on a great metaphor: I knew the kids had used Logo their math class, so I said, "You have to start by telling the turtle which way to face, right? And the turtle stands in one spot and you can spin it in a circle to head in any direction? Okay, you are the turtle. The compass is your nose so it sticks out flat in front of you. Point your nose to 220 degrees!" ...And the kids got it! Yay for Logo turtle! :)
We walked all over the island looking for "the signs of the pirate" that were taped up at different points on our walk. Here's some things we found during our treasure hunt:
A wringer...
The garden...
Turtle Rock at sunset...
An osprey nest... On the way in I had seen the osprey fly in with a big stick in its mouth. Later I saw a crow antagonizing the osprey and really irritating the heck out of it. I wish I had gotten a picture of that. Poor osprey.
The fog bell: (see it up there at the base of the tower? They used that before they used foghorns. Originally it had a little wooden building it sat in-- kind of like an A-frame--but now it just sits outside).
A picnic spot...
And X may mark the spot, but it's not all that obvious. Mibee hadn't figured out that I couldn't see it until we were right on top of it and then I felt really stupid and she laughed at me. The kids got their treasure and we put it back, and then we waited and watched for the next group to try to find it. It wasn't obvious to them, either.
So here's a pretty picture of the sunset...
And a little while later we got to see the Light doing what it's best at... (Funny story: poor Maria tried a hundred times to get her camera to catch the flash at exactly the sixth second... but she kept missing it! Her camera had a delay on it and she just couldn't time it right. Me? I got it the very first try! Hee hee!)
We didn't go to bed for another couple of hours, but it was too dark to take any more decent pictures, so I'll just have to describe what we did. We headed into the Keeper's house and sat on the floor in the Living/Dining room. Elaine had done some extensive research learning what life was like for a lighthouse keeper, and she had collected many old photographs. What she did was hand each of us a copy of a photograph and had us describe what we thought was happening in the photo. Some were easy (a keeper milking a cow, for instance-- keepers who had cows didn't have to drink that disgusting canned milk!). Some were a little tougher: one man was cranking something but it was hard to tell what, and it turned out to be this weight system that turned the lantern to make it flash-- it was similar to the weight system in a cuckoo clock (the Burnt Island light needed to be cranked every six hours to keep it spinning-- the weights dropped down through the cylinder that the spiral staircase revolved around). My picture was of a little rowboat that was carrying a heavy fog bell, and some men were pulling it up the shoreline (with a rope-and-pulley system) to the lighthouse while another man stood on a plank to counterbalance the rowboat. Someone had a copy of this picture:
...and I was like WHOA!! That's the wreck of the Oakley Alexander in 1947, and Nana and Grampie had gone to Cape Elizabeth to watch the rescue effort, and they had that picture-postcard as a memento (which Mum had kept and had scanned into her computer)! You have no idea how surprised I was to see that! I was like, I know that picture! :)
After looking at the pictures for a while, we had a few more things to do before going to bed. We learned a little bit more about some of the old gizmos and gadgets that were used "in the olden days"-- things like rug beaters and thunder jugs. One of the coolest things that was in the kitchen was a mason jar of tickets-- at first I thought they were the ration stickers from WWII, but no-- they were S & H stamps (the famous Green stamps that were precious to every frugal housewife), which of course makes a lot more sense. Turns out these belonged to the Muire family and they had never traded them in for the goods. A visitor to the island asked if the museum would like some old S & H stamp books, and of course they said yes--and so she sent them nearly a dozen, all partially filled in. Stuff like that fascinates me! It's the sort of thing that makes the museum seem very very real to me, very authentic.
Then it was our turn to head up to the lantern room to watch the Light doing its very important job. Did you know the bulb is only about the size of your thumb? I knew the fresnel lens makes it seem a million times bigger so you only need a small source, but seeing the actual tiny bulb makes you think--huh!
Afterwards we all went into the covered walkway and sat against the wall for a Bioluminescence activity. (I should explain that the walkway no longer opens up into the tower base: the door is blocked off now--though you can still see it--and the old fresnel lenses that have been used over the years sit right in front of the door). This walkway is sloped due to the ledges beneath, so the windows look funny-- they are straight and level but the floor is not, so when you're inside it looks like the windows are tilted like badly-hung picture frames!
We were each given a tiny speck of a sea animal that produces a luminescent material (like what's inside a firefly) and a bit of water to grind it up into. We rubbed our hands together and whoa!--they started glowing in the dark! It's like if you accidently break a glowstick and get the juice inside all over your hands. Cool beans!
So then it was bedtime. The girls were very good about going right to bed and being very quiet. The boys, meanwhile, needed multiple reminders. We were so quiet that we could hear everything the boys did, including this conversation:
"Um, Mr. Stevens?"
"What now?"
"I forgot to spit out my gum."
"How could you forget to do that?"
"Could I get it up and spit it out?"
"No. Go to sleep."
"But I need to spit it out!"
"Can't you just forget about it?"
"No. What am I going to do with it?"
"Grr. Um-- just stick it on the bedpost!"
--at which ALL of us on the girls' side burst out laughing! All eighteen of us. It was great.
So finally everyone fell asleep, except for me... I just drifted for a while. I felt like I was waiting for something-- I don't know what. I'm not a light sleeper but I know I was this night-- every time anyone rolled over or coughed I was wide awake again. I almost felt anxious, like something was supposed to happen. Finally, in the middle of the night (probably at precisely 2:00), I heard this sudden downpour... and then I heard it:
...
tooooooooooooooot
tooooooooooooooot
...
tooooooooooooooot
tooooooooooooooot
...
That's what I was waiting for. After that I was out like a light. It's funny how that sound is part of my subconscious, the background sounds of the ocean that I miss so very much. I am not meant to live so far inland that I can't hear the foghorn at night!
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