Friday May 14, 2004 3 pm - 8 pm
Headlights for Lighthouses--Opening Expo

The Firebirds Forever Car Club presents the kickoff event for the Headlights for Lighthouses weekend. Lighthouse and automobile art and photography will be for sale by regional artisans. Numerous East Coast lighthouse societies on hand, exhibits, and select vendors, also. Pre-Registered participants can check in and pick up their registration and goody bag. Door prizes and raffles. Meet Bill and Nancy Younger from Harbour Lights. Door prizes. Refreshments available. Holiday Inn, 291 Jones Road, Falmouth. For more information visit: www.firebirdsforever.cc or 207-439-8905.

Saturday May 15, 2004 8 am - 5:30 pm
Headlights for Lighthouses
An All Vehicle Car Cruise, featuring over 200 classic cars and musclecars, from Woods Hole to Provincetown visiting Cape Cod lighthouses. Lighthouses on the drive will be Nobska, Chatham, Nauset, Three Sisters of Nauset, Bass River Lighthouse, Highland Light and Race Point. Many lighthouses will be open for tours during this cruise. Trophies, raffles and prizes awarded. Registration ends at 12:00 noon. Restaurant discounts provided, free event t-shirt, and receive a plaque for each lighthouse visited. The cruise ends at Skippy's Pier I restaurant, on Route 28 in Yarmouth. Cruise In Car Show at the Drive In next to Skippy's. Awards begin at 4:30 pm. $30 per vehicle. Starting at the Holiday Inn, 291 Jones Road, Falmouth. For more information visit www.firebirdsforever.cc or 207-439-8905.

9:30 am - 11:30 am
Nobska Lighthouse Open
Courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxillary Flotilla 11-2, Tour of the light room In groups of six. Children must be 45 inches tall, shoes and shirts required. No smoking, food or drinks permitted. Nobska Road, Woods Hole.

10:30 am - 3:00 pm
Chatham Lighthouse Open

10:00 am - 3:00 pm
Nauset Lighthouse Open

10 am - 5:30 pm
Cape Cod Highland Lighthouse Tour
(508)487-1121 Climb to the top of the Lighthouse, video and interpretive room. Children must be 51 inches tall to climb stairs. Gift shop. Cape Cod Highland Lighthouse, 27 Highland Light Road, North Truro.

10 am - 3 pm
Race Point Lighthouse Tour
Courtesy of the Cape Cod Chapter of the American Lighthouse Foundation, Rides will run from the Race Point parking lot (Provincetown). A sign in the parking lot will indicate where to pick up rides. Please, do not park in the National Seashore's Ranger Station parking lot.


Saturday May 15, 2004 7 pm
American Lighthouse Foundation Spring Conference and Dinner
Speakers Tim Harrison, President of the American Lighthouse Foundation and Bob Trapani, Jr., President of the Delaware River and Bay Lighthouse Foundation. Raffles and lots more! Dinner: $35 per person. Skippy's Pier I Restaurant, Route 28, Yarmouth. To order tickets, call (207)646-0245. For more information visit: www.lighthousefoundation.org

Sunday May 16, 2004 10 am - 2 pm
Headlights for Lighthouses--Closing Event
Meet Nancy Younger from Harbour Lights, and have your Harbour Lights pieces signed by Nancy Younger. Book signings by Tim Harrison (Golden Age of Lighthouses, Endangered Lighthouses and Lost Lighthouses) and Jeremy D'Entremont (Edward Rowe Snow re-releases and more), plus a lighthouse video showing, exhibits and more. Professional Photographs taken during the weekend available for sale. Holiday Inn, 291 Jones Road, Falmouth. For more information visit: www.firebirdsforever.cc Door prizes.
(Special Chartered tour of Martha's Vineyard, featuring 4 lighthouses available also, by reservation only.)


See you there!

Roxie - We are all booked for this wonderful weekend with all the folks joining Headlights for Lighthouses. We are looking forward to this first of it's kind fundraiser. Can't imagine 500 plus cars traveling from lighthouse to lighthouse. I hope someone gets some aerial shots of this.

Ron
(CT Keeper)

Headlights for Lighthouses has a special set of Lighthouse Stickers picturing the specific lighthouses on the event + a "Headlights For Lighthosues 2004" sticker featuring the lantern room of Highland (Cape Cod) Light.

Price for the set is $6 with profits going to American Lighthouse Foundation. Only 100 sets available.

Roxie -- where and when will these be available?

Ooooohhh, I really wish I was going! MY dad is busy, and besides, after Maine just a week before, I think it would be "pushing it" to go BACK to New England to see MORE lighthouses. This looks SOOOO fun!

Hey Roxie, ... It appears Lorna & I will be joining you for the car cruise on Saturday and possibly Friday night. I will be covering the event for a magazine with a big string attached. They have asked me to submit pictures and an article about the event, and if they like it, they will publish it. If they don't, well it will end up on the "cutting room floor", so to speak.

I do have a couple of questions about the cruise:

Where are you going to park all these vehicles at the various lighthouses?

What are your plans for keeping everyone together in Cape traffic?

Have any of your drivers experienced overheating problems driving at slow speeds in traffic? I know my Corvette likes to "run" and not idle for long periods of time in traffic.

Will some of the participants be on their own going from lighthouse to lighthouse?

Bob

Terrific!

I will be covering the event for a magazine with a big string attached. They have asked me to submit pictures and an article about the event, and if they like it, they will publish it. If they don't, well it will end up on the "cutting room floor", so to speak.


Can you PM me with the name of these folks?


I do have a couple of questions about the cruise:

Where are you going to park all these vehicles at the various lighthouses?

The time for the cruise is spread out, so people will be starting at various times, and there shouldn't be a large of huge numbers of crowds going together, so cars shouldn't be bunching up at the lighthouses. Nauset/3 Sisters, and Race Point have very large parking lots (for the beach) and they will be an excellent place to park, with parking for hundreds of cars. Highland lighthouse will be providing "overflow" parking in a grassy lot near the golf course, just below the regular parking lots. The Bass River light is a hotel/inn with plenty of parking, as the hotel isn't open to the public at this time. Chatham has ample parking with around 25 spaces. Nobska, is a little challenging. We have 15 spaces in the restricted beach parking only area, and there will be around 10 parking places at the lighthouse. There will be 2 people helping to park cars at this lighthouse. I am suggesting that you only need to stop at this lighthouse if you are interested in touring it. We will be giving out that dash plaque ahead of time, so for many people they won't have to stop there.


What are your plans for keeping everyone together in Cape traffic?

We are offering people to go in groups, with groups departing from Falmouth every half and hour. However, some people want to do it on their own - not in a group - and that is fine as well. We are supplying detailed directions with maps to give everyone the best routes on the Cape. Whenever possible, we will try to keep the cars off of Route 28, and we will divert the journey from Nobska to Bass River onto Route 6, it's shorter, there's less traffic, and it will keep the cars cooled down.

Have any of your drivers experienced overheating problems driving at slow speeds in traffic? I know my Corvette likes to "run" and not idle for long periods of time in traffic.

My Firebird also runs on the warm side, and I am aware that people could have potential issues. That is why we have tried to make the best route possible. In addition this is still the slow season on Cape Cod, it's still fairly quiet for the month of May until Memorial day. We have notified the Police departments as well of the event, and in some cases I have gone down to meet with them.

Will some of the participants be on their own going from lighthouse to lighthouse?

Some people want to do the cruise on their own, at their own pace. It's entirely up to each person. Some people have already told me that they are interested in visiting the lighthouses in a different order than what we have suggested (for their own reasons), and that is fine, too. We have some people making the reverse drive, as well, starting in Provincetown and ending in Woods Hole (Falmouth).

Better late than never! The reason I brought this thread to the top again is the fact a revised version of the article I wrote relating to Headlights for Lighthouses Cruise of 2004 was finally published.

The article mentions nothing about HFL because of a series of events that happend right when I was ready to submit my article. I spent many hours preparing the article for submission, including photos. I left a voice mail for my contact with the publication that I was leaving on vacation and would be gone a couple of weeks and that the story package was available for pick up at my work place. When I returned from vacation the package was still here. I called my contact and once again I got voice mail so I left another message that I was going back on vacation and the package would still be at my work place.

Needless to say when I returned from my second vacation and the article wasn't picked up, I did some checking and found out that my contact had been diagnosed with cancer and was out of commission having very aggressive treatment. My article seemed of little importance to me then. Nothing is more important than your health.

A couple of months later, my contact gave me a call and asked me to submit the article. Unfortunately, the window of opportunity for an article about a Spring event had passed. The magazine advised me they would publish the article next Spring if the Headlights for Lighthouses was again held at the Cape. I guess you know the answer to that, it wasn't going to be at the Cape in 2005.

The publisher then asked if I would be willing to rewrite the article without reference to HFL, and turn it into a day tour of some of the lighthouses on the Cape. I agreed to do it and this would salvage part of the many hours I spent on the original article.

After several rewrites to reduce the article to a size acceptable by the magazine, my article and two of my photos were published in the May issue of Cape Cod Life. One photo of Nauset Light appears in the index, and the other photo of Highland Light appears at the beginning of the article.

I'm pleased that all my efforts to work with this publication finally paid off. The hardest part of the whole assignment was the editing of the article down to size. It meant sacrificing some direction and lots of color, so to speak. The final product was less than half the size of the original article. I'm just glad it made it into the publication. Now I have my foot in the door for future contributions to the magazine.

Bob

Perserverance, Bob. And now you are a PUBLISHED AUTHOR and, as you say, have your foot in the door.

Keep at it! You've got the combined talents of photographer, author, and knowledge of lighthouses galore!

Congratulations!!!

How about a scan of the article? Where can single issues be purchased of the magazine?