October 17, 2022 Part 1 Umpqua Lighthouse

Forgot to record and tell you..  On October 6, 2022, we were at the Keiser Elks.  It was near 6 AM and my cat Dusty just kept “meowing” which woke me up.  Then the motorhome starts to shake.  I thought Andy was doing something but when I saw him in his chair, we both knew it was an earthquake – 4.4 magnitude and the center was about 50 miles from us.  WOW!

That was the second one we felt…  The other was in Shenandoah National Park near Luray, VA in 2011 that was centered near Washington DC.  That one shut down the Washington Monument for a few years..

Hopefully we will not feel another one.

The first item on our agenda today was to go to the Oregon Dunes Visitor Center.  We arrived and found out that it is now a ranger station – Bummer. 

So we headed to the Umpqua Lighthouse. 

This was the first lighthouse in the Oregon territory.  It’s sister lighthouse is the Heceta Lighthouse that we saw earlier.  However, this one we were able to tour.

Our tour guide was Linda and she is a full time RVer.  She works September and October at the Lighthouse and then heads south to Yuma for the winter.  How cool is that.

The tour started here at the museum.  The house is original and it was the home of 20 single Coast Guard men.  When WWII broke out, 200 men were sent here to patrol the beaches and live in this house.  Can you imagine what that was like?

It only lasted a short time and the 200 men were sent a few miles north where housing was built.  

  

One of the older Coast Guard rescue boats.  It was meant to right itself in case of a rollover.  There are two water tight cabins that the men were able to stay for safety.  Today most rescues are done by helicopter although they do still have roll over boats that are used for more that 4 people.  Those boats are made out of aluminum.

 

Coast Guard Lookout Station:

There are two rock jetties that signal the entrance to the Umpqua River:

Those black dots you see are actually a mussel farm.  The salt water is mixed with fresh water and the mussels are raised using the suspended culture method.  Those dots are what is used to suspend the mussels.

Whale jawbone:

This viewpoint is also a designated whale watching site during their migrations.

The homes you see to the left of the lighthouse is Coast Guard Housing.  They have homes and duplexes for families and small apartments for the single folk:

 

The Lighthouse Keepers Quarters:

 

The cleaning smocks that they had to use to clean the lenses:

 

Part of the original logbook of the Lighthouse Keepers:

The original Lighthouse:

Looking from the stairs to the Quarters:

Due to the earthquakes in the region, none of the stairways are anchored to the wall - they were built to stand alone. 

The main platforms are sitting on brick ledges and each stairway is attached to the platforms:

The inside was originally painted white, however, they realized that the paint kept the moisture in so all the paint was removed  - very carefully.

When the lighthouse was first built, bricks were made by hand and each brick maker’s bricks were a little different.  So they had workers match bricks so that each layer was even.

Every sixth (or less) layer, the bricks were laid perpendicular for strength.

One of the brick maker’s wife died during this project and this brick was dedicated to her:

Each brick maker left his own mark on his bricks:

The light on the left is what is now used:

We went to the top – so exciting!  This lighthouse is active.  Each piece of glass is clear.  The red is a cover over the outside of the glass.

Each lighthouse has its own signature light pattern.  This one was two white and one red as it turned.  That is how the ships knew where there were.

The very middle is what holds the lightbulb:

Closer look:

The red panels outside of the lens:

How cool is that!

The original scope used by the keepers:

And back down we went:

What an incredible tour!

More information can be found here:

http://www.lighthousetrek.com/umpqua.html

https://www.outdoorproject.com/united-states/oregon/umpqua-river-lighthouse

https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=130

 

An interesting tidbit.  If there is nothing interfering with your line of sight, you can only see a little over 20 miles – curvature of the earth.  But in order to do that, you would need to be a little over 200’ above sea level.

Many west coast lighthouses are built on a bluff so they can take advantage of the height of the bluff, and build smaller lighthouses.  Many on the east coast need to be taller to take advantage of that height.

(Now, that is the simple version – a lot of other factors come into play like intensity of the light, weather, etc.  Just an FYI.)

From there we went to the museum.  There was a lot of information on the Oregon Lighthouses:

 

 

 

How to tell where you are on the Oregon Coast using the Lighthouses and their light pattern:

 

 

 

 

 

Beautiful pieces of glass:

This is the light setup that is currently used to light the lighthouse:

 

 

One final look:

  

The next part of our day is in Part 2.  Enjoy!

June 9-12, 2009 – Domes, Satellites, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Pipeline, and Cold Climate Housing

On Tuesday morning, I woke at 5 AM to the smell of smoke.  I looked out the window and saw lots of smoke so out the door I went to check out the farmhouse, buildings, and field.  By the time I was fully awake, I realized that the whole valley was filled with smoke.  Turned out there is a forest fire burning about 100 miles away and the wind was blowing just right to bring the smoke into Fairbanks. It is very dry in the interior right now and there are a number of fires burning.  Very scary.

So this morning, I washed all our rugs and went grocery shopping.

This afternoon we took a drive to Murphy Dome:

The views of the area from the top of the dome hill are beautiful although with the haze/smoke it was hard to see the Alaskan Range:

 

We made a stop at Wal-Mart to get Andy’s glasses fixed and found out that there is a line of Sophia Loren frames now out – remember the big eyeglasses she use to wear – :-))  That will be my next pair!

We then stopped at the American Legion and supper at the VFW – had a great time.

The day continues to grow:

Wednesday, 10th,  we took two tours at the University of Alaska.  Our first tour was at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center in their virtual reality Discovery Lab.  They have a number of HUGH computers and we had a number of 3D tours of their labs and various places of Alaska.  WOW!

Our second tour was at the Geophysical Institute.  There were three parts to this tour.  In the first part of this tour we learned about the Alaska Satellite Facility.  This is where they monitor and download information on a number of the north-south satellites.  They showed us a number of satellite images – it was incredible.

Here is one of their receivers on the roof of the University:

In the second part we went to the Alaska Earthquake Information Center where they monitor earthquakes throughout Alaska.  Here is one of the control centers:

The Earthquake Center works closely with the Tsunami Center and the Volcano Observatory and NOAA to help warn the public and emergency personnel as well as scientific research and predictions.

And from there we went to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.  Here is one of their control centers:

For Andy and I who love science and are tech heads, these areas were a highlight.  We learned about the various volcanoes and of particular interest was Mt. Redoubt which has had 19 eruptions since March and possibly more on the way.  (And yes, we are still heading that way this summer.)  It was so interesting to see the satellite images of the various eruptions in the ring of fire.  They also follow ash (from the volcanoes) in the atmosphere to warn planes and the public (and the supercomputer center helps model the ash predictions).

It was one of those times where we had information overload.  I have listed web pages at the bottom of this blog – check them out.  For the AVO, there are 3 webcam’s pointed at Mt. Redoubt – Still smoking and the lava dome is still growing….

What a great way to spend an afternoon.

On Thursday, 11th, we continued our touring.  Our first stop was at one of the overlooks for the Alaska pipeline:

When permafrost was detected, the pipeline was built above ground on VSMs (Vertical Support Members).  These VSMs are filled with Anhydrous Ammonia, which boils at 33 degrees F. This allows the heat from the ground to be absorbed by the Anhydrous Ammonia, which rises as a gas and dissipates the heat from the thawing permafrost through the metal fins located atop the VSMs.  This maintains the ground’s stability year round by keeping the permafrost frozen all year round.

We then headed up the Steese Highway to the Poker Flat Research Range which is the largest land based rocket research range in the world and the only high latitude rocket range in the US.  The one brochure we had said that there were tours on Thursdays but everything was shut down..  so we went back to Fairbanks to the tour at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center.  The center was created to facilitate the development and use of energy efficient, healthy, and cost effective building technologies for Alaska and other cold climate regions.  As our guide told us - “what works for the lower 48 does not always work when the temperature is minus 25 and lower and there is little or no light for a length of time”.  They do a lot of testing of building materials, windows, heaters, water and sewage systems.  With the permafrost and temperatures, sewage systems can be a real problem.

Here is their lobby’s centerpiece – a large masonry heater:

“The masonry heater features local river rock and weighs about 12,000 pounds.  A single firing of dry wood is all that is required to heat throughout the day.  The masonry heater returns 80 percent of its heat to the building with 98 percent combustion efficiency.”

This was another great tour and I have also included their web page on the bottom of the blog.

Then this evening, we had dinner with Pennie and Dave, fellow Escapees that we met last week on the Discovery Boat Tour.  They came back to our MH afterwards and we all had a great time chatting.  Hopefully we will meet up with them again on this trip.

Today, Friday, was a take it easy day.  This morning I did laundry and some cleaning and Andy did some cleanup around our site.  The next three days we will be working so stay tuned.

Here are the sites…

http://www.avo.alaska.edu/

http://www.arsc.edu/homepage.html

http://www.giseis.alaska.edu/

www.asf.alaska.edu

http://www.cchrc.org/

Have a great weekend.