Winds Howling

We recently saw our 65th and 66th lighthouses — Charity Island Lighthouse and Gravelly Shoal Lighthouse — while driving home from a trip to Oscoda, Michigan. Both are a few miles out in the waters of Lake Huron, one on the shore of an island and one standing on the lakebed. It’s just barely possible to see both from the shore. We did so from “Cemetery Beach,” a public beach tucked along the highway next to a local cemetery.

Gravelly Shoal Lighthouse was built as a New Deal project during the Great Depression, using an “art deco” design previously used elsewhere in the Great Lakes, per Lighthouse Friends.

Remarkable photos of the tower being hauled into place can be seen on Terry Pepper’s blog.

According to Lighthouse Friends, this lighthouse sold at auction in 2015 to a guy named Bill Collins, who also bought other lighthouses in Michigan and Delaware. The sale was still pending as of September 2016, per the Detroit News.

In the first place, Gravelly Shoal Lighthouse had been built to replace nearby Charity Island Lighthouse, which was built on the biggest island in the area in 1857 but was no longer sufficient for 20th century traffic. Our view of this lighthouse was not nearly as good as Gravelly Shoal, but I think we did see it.

We viewed the lighthouses from a stretch of beach that was effectively the backyard beach of a lot of really nice houses, but you’re allowed to walk it. We got to the beach from a little trail connected to a parking lot next to the Sims-Whitney Cemetery.

The cemetery is named for Sims Township and Whitney Township, whose border lies less than a mile to the north.

The parking area itself was slightly ominous, with decidedly headstone-like boulders to mark the parking spaces, an obstructed view of the field of real headstones a few yards away, and a janky, uninviting gap in the fence you must be able to pass through to go any further.

A short trail down a hill takes you to the shoreline, where we found a memorial to somebody’s dog, Tank. Passersby were invited to take or leave tennis balls to play with their dog, as Tank had loved to do. #TossesForTank

Down at the beach, you were basically in the lakeside backyard of a lot of really nice, big houses. You’re allowed to walk the shoreline, and we did so for about 20 minutes before turning back around.