The Climb (NYC Part 3)

Sorry that this post's title is the same as a certain song sung by Miley Cyrus, but FINALLY we are on to Part Three of our New York City/Long Island Lighthouse adventure that took place last September.

I have already introduced Montauk Point Lighthouse in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series of posts and today I am going to be talking about how we climbed our second lighthouse, the first being the infamous Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. 

Prior to climbing the lighthouse, we walked around the inside of the museum and checked out all of the exhibits that were set up.

A fourth order Fresnel Lens

The 3 1/2 Order Fresnel Lens

There was also this really cool exhibit with models depicting all of the lighthouses surrounding Long Island.  

After that we were on to climbing the lighthouse!

Montauk Point Lighthouse has 137 iron steps that you have to climb in order to get to the top of the lighthouse.

We're making our way up!
 

In order to visit the lighthouse grounds and get into the museum you have to pay $9.00 (for adults).  Included in this price is the ability to climb the lighthouse.  You can see the lighthouse without having to pay to get in (even though you will most likely have to pay for parking if you want to stop your car), but we feel that giving money here and there to lighthouses is beneficial since the majority of these funds go towards the upkeep of these important structures. 

Plus, these views made it money well-spent!

Once at the top, you can see the automated light that was put into the lighthouse, replacing the bivalve Fresnel lens, in 1987.  The current light flashes every five minutes and can be seen up to 19 nautical miles away.  Interestingly, nautical miles and statute miles (what we typical think of as miles) are different in value.  As we all know, a statute mile is equivalent to 5,280 feet, yet, a nautical mile is approximately equivalent to 6,076.11549.  Therefore, in order to roughly calculate how many statute miles there are in nautical miles you need to multiply by 1.15.  Therefore, a rough calculation is that 19 nautical miles is equivalent to 21.85 statute miles.  Thanks boatsafe.com for the calculations!

You can't get all the way up to the light, however, because a yellow line marks where you cannot pass.

Here I am with the yellow line!

After checking out the views and looking at the light, we headed back down.  Before we left though we made sure to sign the guest book for the lighthouse.  Here is where we coined ourselves the "Western New York Lighthouse Lovers".  We think it is a pretty good fit!

Here's one last photo, one that reminds me of a conch shell.

That's all from Montauk Point Lighthouse, next up will be two other lighthouses on Long Island!