Chris and I set out again this past weekend to photograph more lighthouses, only these were slightly closer to home. We first headed up to Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore. It’s not that far, just across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.

It’s a 24 mile long monstrosity; a bridge, then a tunnel, then a bridge, then a tunnel, then a bridge. . . you get my drift. And just on the other side is the Cape Charles Lighthouse.

We could see it from the bridge as we approached. This was taken from the car as we were nearing the end of the bridge, so close already. Following directions from online, we headed down these narrow little roads that got even narrower as we went. Then they turned to dirt roads. The dirt road had a road sign, so it was technically still a road to me. Plus, it’s the road the online directions told us to take. . . although it DID look like someone’s driveway. As such it turned out to be. A man came out hollering at us asking us what we thought we were doing. We told him that we were trying to get to the lighthouse and he bellowed that we were on private property. Nice. The website needs to be updated a bit, I think.

So we turned around and stopped at a place down the road that looked sort of official, like maybe they’d know how we could get to this elusive lighthouse. It was the Virginia Wildlife Refuge; a small building with an observatory room and a few displays. And there we saw a display of this lighthouse. It said that if you hike out to the Marsh Overlook, you’ll be able to see the lighthouse. Well, I didn’t really bring my hiking shoes, but I was game. We took a map and started out. The path we started on was called Butterfly Trail. It sounded so pretty, so we were hopeful for some pretty photo opportunities along the way. And we weren’t disappointed.

Butterflies were flittering and fluttering around everywhere, but trying to find one that would light somewhere was another story.

Then trying to get my camera to focus quickly enough before they fluttered away was another trick in and of itself. They sure didn’t stay still very long. . . well, not long enough for me to fumble around anyway.

Dragonflies were everywhere as well. They were slightly more cooperative for the feeble photographer.

Mostly, I just took pictures of a lot of totally random stuff. And I LIKE this picture. Don’t know why really. It’s so simple, yet I love it for some reason.

We hiked through the Butterfly Trail and followed our little map.

Then we came across this ancient cemetary.

These headstones are seriously old.

Not too far past the cemetary, we finally came to the Marsh Overlook where we’d get to see the lighthouse.

And THIS is as close as we could get. WTH! This is even with a telephoto lens.

On the way back, we went down a different path that took us to this. Using YJB logic, I thought that MAYBE, just maybe, we could get a better view of the lighthouse from higher up. I didn’t know how much closer we were at this point, but I was thinking that higher meant better. Wouldn’t you think so?

Nope. This is all we could see from up there. Not a bad view, but not a lighthouse in sight. I told Chris that I should have sent him up those 100+ stairs first to let me know if it was worth my effort. It was hot and that was a lot of stairs. But I made it just fine. Chris has very little faith in his old mom. I’m not dead yet.

But I DO have to say, it was a lot more enjoyable going DOWN the stairs.

Oh well, it was still a good little day trip. But the hike had taken us a lot longer than planned, so we opted to go to the next two lighthouses another day. We were hungry!

I’ll write about our stop for dinner tomorrow. I’ve got to get Chris to send me the pictures he took of our plates. You WON’T believe it. Good stuff!