I cover the waterfront

The weather was mostly overcast and rainy Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the extended forecast promised more of the same for Saturday. So when I awakened this morning to a blast of sunshine in my window, I wondered for a moment if I was still dreaming. Thankfully not, and even better, the sun decided to stay all day, which made this a perfect day to visit the beaches and check out the coastline.

There was a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored event going on today called the Lighthouse Challenge, in which participants were dared to visit all five of the island's lighthouses over the course of one day. It wouldn't be impossible to do: The one at Gay Head is a bit out of the way and the one at Cape Poge is actually on Chappaquiddick, but the other three are all within a few miles of each other. I saw the one at Gay Head on Monday and I was curious what the others were like. But I did not want to pay the $99 fee to join the Challenge, so I decided to make my own trip around. I would have failed the Challenge: I only saw two of the four I needed to see. Even so, it was a gorgeous day and I wasn't in any hurry to get anywhere.

The lighthouse at Edgartown looks almost like a sculpture from a distance. It's rather on the puny side as lighthouses go. It's easily accessible from a sandy path that runs through a field of wildflowers and out onto a rocky footbridge that leads you out onto the little island where the lighthouse is located. The lighthouse is surrounded by a Children's Memorial, dedicated to all the babies whose lives ended shortly after they began. It's a project by Rick Herrington and the Martha's Vineyard Historical Society that was dedicated eight years ago. Many of the bricks in the platform around the lighthouse bear the names of children; in some cases, the babies did not live long enough to be officially named and the brick simply says something like "Baby T Honor." Fragments of shells are scattered around the area, rattling slightly in the winds coming off Edgartown Harbor. It's striking because it would be so easy to miss. I might not have noticed it myself if it hadn't been for the explanation in a display case near the lighthouse.

Visitors are welcome to tour the Edgartown lighthouse for a $5 admission fee, but I didn't go in because it looked like it wasn't much more than a spiral staircase leading up to an observation deck. The real scenery of note was down on the ground.

In contrast, you can't even get close to the West Chop Lighthouse, which is located on the outskirts of Vineyard Haven. Locked wooden gates and stern warning signs greet passersby. It's under the supervision of the Coast Guard (and Homeland Security, according to the signage) and they're not playing host to anybody, apparently. But that's in keeping with the atmosphere of the West Chop area, which is awash in expensive homes, private drives, private fishing docks, private beaches and that sort of thing. It's jaw-droppingly gorgeous and at the same time very "look but don't touch -- in fact, don't even look for very long, if you don't mind."

To wrap up the day, I had planned to seek out the lighthouse in Oak Bluffs just before sundown. I ran into two obstacles. One, I couldn't find the lighthouse, even though I drove up and down the coast. Two, when I finally thought I would settle for getting out of the car and getting some nice sunset shots on the beach, I realized I had left my camera at home -- I had been downloading some pictures and I'd forgotten to put it back in my bag. So I had to settle for snapping a few shots with the cell phone camera. Yes, even in a low-resolution format, the sunsets here are pretty ravishing. The one this evening looked as if the clouds were trying to mimic the wavy waters beneath them.