A few weeks ago I went on the Avila Lighthouse tour with my parents and my sister. My sister had been before, and my dad really wanted to go. I didn't really care one way or another. I had always kind of been curious about the lighthouse but never enough to plan on going out myself.
You start out near Fat Cat's and are guided through Diablo land by a docent. Honestly, the hike would have been much better without being guided, (but it has to be because of the Diablo land). If you follow the trail, you can't really get lost. It took us nearly 2 hours to hike in, because we had to stop and learn about every, single, little, plant. And we didn't have just one docent, we had three...and another one in training. I could care less what the names of plants are, and I know what a tick looks like.
It was pretty cool being on the other side of what I see everyday. I never realized what a big cove we are in.
I love old houses, and instantly fell for this one. I didn't take any pictures of the inside, but a house is a house. You can pretty much guess what it looks like. This house is now a museum, restored back to what it was like when the light keeper and his family actually lived there. Now, there's another house not far away that they live in. It's definitely not as cool as this one!
These are the steps you have to walk up to to get to the light tower. It's obviously no longer in use . You should have seen the bulbs that it took to put out the light that they used a long time ago. I should have taken a picture of it. There's like a 127 pieces of glass that reflects this flame burning from a gigantic wick. The whole thing was I'd say at least 3 feet tall and a foot and half in diameter.
Today, the light is a little more modern. It's that little box just to the right of the antenna and right above the post.
I don't know if you've ever noticed the ray of light it puts out, but one streak is brighter than the other. I actually asked why, because it's something I've always wondered about. Each port has it's own signal, and the two different brightnesses of the light is the signal for Port San Luis. If that even makes sense. I don't know the correct lighthouse terms!
After a nearly 2 hour hike in, a little over an hour at the lighthouse museum, we charged it back out in 45 minutes. It was a pretty cool little tour, it just took up all of our Saturday morning and went into our afternoon. Still, I'm glad I did it. For living here my entire life, I guess you can never learn enough history about the area.
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