Esther and I combined celebrating our 32nd Wedding anniversary with volunteering at the NJ Lighthouse Challenge.

We spent Saturday from 8 AM to 2 PM and sunday from Noon to 6 PM manning the NJLHS table at East Point Lighthouse. I was hoping to meet up with some new Wackos- like Beacon Bob- but the only Wacko I saw all weekend was Hank (East Point) who was volunteering at East Point with the Lighthouse organization.

I did get recognized by about 10 people over the two days- they remembered meeting me at the LI Lighthouse Challenge earlier this year either at Orient Point or Old Field (one person actually remembered seeing me at both- and at Eaton's Neck which I went to after finishing up at Old Field on Sunday).

We had over 1300 visitors at East Point over the two days. We only had 6 groups totalling 14 people finish the challenge at East Point. It's not a natural finishing popint for the Challenge.

I was told on Sunday that almost 500 people were at Sandy Hook hoping to do the Night Climb on Saturday evening. I'm not sure how many actually got to climb after dark, though. There were night climbs at 4 of the lighthouses- Cape May, Absecon, Tinicum and Sandy Hook. It was the first year for this aspect of the challenge and they were scheduled only for Saturday evening from 6-8 PM.

Here are some photos taken at East Point on Saturday.

Here's Esther (left) and Betty Smith (right) at the NJLHS table.



Here are two views of East Point. I took the first one and Esther took the second one.






Esther and I did our own mini-Challenge on Saturday afternoon/ evening. We left East Point and drove over to Hereford to visit with the volunteers there and I had a very nice conversation with Harry Hine while there. He had nothing but nice things to say about HL collectors in general and sang the praises of one in particular- Dave Hannum. I agreed with him on both points. I did not think to take a picture of him while there but here's a photo of Hereford I did take.

There were some photographers displaying their wares also at Hereford



We left there and on the spur of the moment decided to drive up to Absecon. I did not take very many photos here but here's one I did take.



Donna Elias was there with many of her paintings and one of the members of the NJLHS who is also very active at Absecon had a children's book she wrote available there as well.

We left there and drove on down to Cape May for the Night Climb. I opted to not climb as my knee has been bothering me but Esther did climb the lighthouse.

Herea re two photos I took of Cape May.





We left Cape May and went and got some dinner and got a good n ights sleep to prepare for day two of the challenge.

Dennis

Here's a photo I took of East Point LH at about 6:15 on Sunday from the actual East Point.



As an addendum to our Challenge Weekend we stopped at Barnegat on the way home. Here are a couple of photos I took while Esther climbed the lighthouse.





Another successful NJ Lighthouse challenge came to a close.

Dennis

Great report Dennis, thank you.

Joe and I so wanted to do the NJ Challenge this year, especialy being that we had to drive right throu there heading back south from Maine at the right time. But we couldn't be in two places at once. Had to high tail it on down to Carrabelle, Fl for that event the same day as the Challenge.

Oh well maybe another year!

Thanks for the report!