Bodie Island (OBX Part 5)

This post will be the final one about our adventure to the Outer Banks as part of our Honeymoon. Although it's the last post, it will actually be about the first Outer Banks lighthouse we visited. The Bodie Island Lighthouse, which despite its spelling is actually pronounced like "body", is the lone light-station on the Outer Banks' Bodie Island. With this picture below I'll give you a lil' more warning than we had when we drove up to the visitor center.

Like I was saying when we entered the grounds of the lighthouse and saw the lighthouse in its "recovery-in-progress" state,  although we were amazed by its great stature (at this point the coastal lighthouses of the Outer Banks and rest of the southeast were by far the tallest lighthouses we had seen compared to the smaller New England-type ones we were used to). We were also shocked to see it with all the scaffolding and even the lantern-room all tarped off, as you can see below.

 

The bottom picture shows the lighthouse with the old keeper's dwelling which now serves as the visitors center and has a great bookstore where we actually picked up our copy of the Lighthouse People's "List of All Existing U.S. Lighthouses." Around the back of the lighthouse the park service had a walk-way and a viewing gazebo built, here are a couple of our shots from there.

 

 

 As we made our way back to the lighthouse and visitors center we headed inside and looked at all the great exhibits inside and spoke with some of the workers about the restoration project going on. We learned that the restoration began in August 2009 and was estimated to take only about 18 months, so we were happy to hear that soon after our departure the lighthouse would be back to normal.

Turns out that wouldn't be the case, this past February as workers were repairing the spiral staircase, repainting the interior, and updating the stations electrical system (the first-order Fresnel Lens was also sent away for repairs) there were some huge cracks discovered under the lighthouse's balcony. Damages (caused by years of wear-and-tear, as this was the first restoration work ever on the lighthouse since its 1872 opening) this large were not anticipated when funding was set aside, and as it turns out in March  the restoration project was indefinitely stalled due to lack of funds and the scaffolding was set to be taken down. So, although the lighthouse may appear to be back to normal it is nowhere near repaired and therefore will not yet be re-opened for climbing. Who knows when the restoration work will start-up again, hopefully soon so this great piece of American Architecture can be restored as soon as possible.