Cape Disappointment, North Head Lighthouse

September, 2020

There are two lighthouses at Cape Disappointment on the Washington State side of the Columbia River, the north side of the river. The ocean here is so wild and the river’s input makes it even more bewildering even in daylight and in good weather. But in bad weather, when it’s icy and snowing, when even salt water freezes on your boat and on you, or when the wind is blowing a gale sideways and the ice cold rain penetrates any and all clothing, or at night when there’s no moon and no way to see anything around you, or any combination of the above, you are likely to be in trouble. So the decision was made to install two separate lighthouses here to help with navigation. One lighthouse is at Cape Disappointment right at the mouth of the Columbia River. The other lighthouse is just two miles north, very close in the scheme of things. The second lighthouse is the North Head Lighthouse. Today, my friends and I decided to head to North Head Lighthouse and explore the area. It was a gorgeous, calm day … perfect for our expedition.

One thing you might not know about lighthouses is that each lighthouse projects light, yes. But with the rotation of the light and the timing of that rotation, or simply due to how often the light turns on and off, then each lighthouse anywhere near each other in the world sends out a different pattern of light beams. So if you are on a ship out on the ocean and you know the light patterns (they are available to every ship and to the public at large) … if you know the patterns, then by watching the light from a lighthouse, then you know exactly which lighthouse you are looking at and you know pretty much where you are. With TWO lighthouses at Cape Disappointment, each with a different light pattern, it was hoped that disasters could be avoided.

So, let’s go take a look at this North Head Lighthouse. Come on along!

We drove from the campground to a parking lot where the trail starts that leads out to this lighthouse. We parked and headed out the ADA paved trail to the lighthouse, walking through lush Pacific Northwest rainforest. Summers here can be sunny and warm-ish. But autumn, winter, and spring are wet and cool (winters can be extremely windy and cold). In fact, this area has more fog (really WET fog) than anywhere else in the continental USA. Hence, the area is lush with ferns and moss and so many other green and healthy plants. Pretty much anything that doesn’t have a fern growing on it … has moss on it!

 

 

 

A water tower? In the middle of the forest? What’s that about? We asked ourselves those questions as we walked past it, but we found out soon enough … the answer is coming along here in just a moment. But first we have more wet and wild woodland things to see.

The trees above grew out of those horizontal nurse logs below them. Nurse logs are trees that have fallen, either from old age or from being cut or from storms, and then as they lie on the ground they become a nursery for the new trees that grow out of them.

In this case, the new trees are now larger than the nurse logs/trees were.

In the photo above, there’s a stump right in the middle of the photo. To me, the stump looked like a large rabbit, sitting upright on its haunches, looking to the right, with its ears perked up. As I stood looking at it, and as I started making up a story about it, something seemed to move … something RIGHT behind the tips its ears.

So I zoomed in with the camera …

🙂

And then we walked on up the path.

By now we were up on the headland. This was our first view of the ocean below.

 

This next view (above) was amazing after being in the dark woods. There’s a cove right below us, 130 feet below us! And, on the very right side of the photo, is the coastline heading up along the State of Washington, the Pacific Coast beach. Remember to click on photos to enlarge them.

Here’s a closeup (below) of some of the rocks that stick out into the Pacific Ocean in the cove below where I was standing.

And here’s a video I took while standing on the top of that cliff just a few steps off the path. Listen to that ocean!

There’s still more to see and a lighthouse yet to find, so on along the path we went.

Around the next corner, we found why that water tower exists in the middle of the forest …

 

These two buildings had originally been used to house the people who operated and maintained the North Head Lighthouse. Now that the lighthouse is automated, and now that there’s a small but nice sized town nearby (Ilwaco) where people can live and use their vehicles to get out to the lighthouse in order to maintain it … now these two buildings are no longer needed to house people who care for the lighthouse. Now, you can rent these homes! There’s a third building/home here as well … the link for rental info is HERE.

So … that water tower that we saw earlier on our walk out here was built to collect and store and then supply water to these homes. I don’t know whether the water tower still does that today, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.

Ok, on up the path! Where is that lighthouse?!

Hey, there it is … peeking over the hill …

 

 

The North Head Lighthouse might look small in the photo above, but it is 67 feet tall, and that’s on top of the cliff that’s 135 feet above the beach, so that lighthouse is plenty tall!

We couldn’t go inside because of COVID19, but we could walk all the way around the lighthouse and around those smaller buildings. I walked over to the fence behind that white pickup truck in the photo above, to see if I could see down to the ocean below (there was another cove here). The cliff was so steep, that I couldn’t see directly below me, even standing just three of four feet from the edge (rest assured, I was behind the fence!). I snapped the photo below from where I was standing at the fence.

I moved along the fence a bit and then took another photo (below). Even though I still couldn’t see straight down, I sure could see enough. The top of this neighboring cliff was 135 feet high too, think about that. And consider what would happen to a boat, even a large ship, or a person in the water, that was blown into rocks like this.

We love our lighthouses don’t we? All over the world. They surely help keep us safe.

I took the photo below of North Head Lighthouse while I was standing on the ocean side of it, looking back up at it.

 

How important lighthouses are. I’m so glad we can go see them, and see what they see. What a great time my friends and I had today, what an amazing view on a gorgeous late summer day.