Please visit her site at www.chessenparker.com for more information!

Climbers are asked to bring their own flashlights to navigate the lighthouse’s 257 steps. At the top, they will stand on the balcony to witness the beam of the light shining out onto the ocean.

Admission fee is $7 for adults, $3.50 for those under age 12 and over age 61. advance tickets can be purchased at the lighthouse ticket booth beginning Oct. 2. This event is expected to sell out.

Courtesy of WRAL

The Bodie Island Lighthouse and the Ocracoke Lighthouse will shut down their lights next Monday.

The National Park Service says the Bodie light will shut down for at least 18 months. Repairs include removing 344 glass prisms for cleaning, restoring the panels that hold the prisms and the pedestal that supports the lens, strengthening the lighthouses spiral staircases, and installing a fire detection and suppression system.

The work on Ocracoke is expected to take about four months. The repairs will include renovation of metal work on the interior and exterior, correcting the lightning protection measures and painting both the inside and outside of the lighthouse.

The Bodie Island Lighthouse still uses its 1871 Fresnel lens and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Courtesy of WITN-7

From hamptonroads.com

Bodie Island Light Station is getting beautified | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

BODIE ISLAND

Nearly every corner of the Bodie Island Light Station site will soon be buzzing with restoration projects.

Three historic buildings that were on the oceanfront off the highway were relocated last week to the station’s entrance road in preparation for rehabilitation.

And workers this month are expected to begin removing the original First Order Fresnel lens atop the lighthouse before restoration starts on the 1872 tower and its lens.

A new mile-long, 6-foot-wide wooden boardwalk from the lighthouse to the Pamlico Sound, a partnership with the state, is nearly finished. Soon, the roof of the lightkeeper’s station and its walkway will be replaced. Next year, the entrance road will be widened and bike paths will be added.

Once the projects - which will cost about $4.5 million - are completed, visitors will be able to climb the Bodie Island Lighthouse for the first time in decades. The beacon might finally outshine the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in the public eye, said Doug Stover, historian with the National Park Service Outer Banks Group.

“This is going to be incredible,” Stover said. “It’s going to be much more popular because they haven’t climbed it and it’s closer to the urban area.”

When two of the relocated buildings, the 1916 boathouse and the 1879 life saving station, are secured on pilings at their new homes off the west side of N.C. 12, the Park Service will prepare them for use in the near future. The third moved building, the 1925 Bodie Island Coast Guard Station, will be re-sided and boarded up until money is acquired to restore it.

Before the buildings were moved, the entire station, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the 1960s, had been behind dunes just north of Coquina Beach, and was in danger of destruction by erosion.

Stover said the life saving station, used as a ranger station, and the small boathouse, used as a garage, are expected to maintain the same purposes. The Coast Guard station may become a visitor center, lifeguard housing or an education center.

“When we get close to the restoration, we’ll have a public scoping meeting to decide what the use of that building will be,” Stover said. “But the main point is, we won’t have to worry about it being destroyed by the ocean.”

By then, improvements elsewhere at Bodie Island will be well under way.

From the ground, the 156-foot lighthouse looks well-tended, with some signs of wear and tear showing inside the oil house at its base.

But inside the tower, windows are rotting and broken. Some steps are rusting and fragile. Off the lantern room, the gallery is held together with cables and chicken wire; large panes of glass are shattered or have cracks in them. One framed window with a large hole is patched with yellow caulking foam, blue Plexiglas and duct tape.

“It seems like the lighthouse deteriorated more the further up you go,” Stover said.

In 2004, four chunks of iron - one weighing 450 pounds - fell from the gallery. The public was not allowed into the lighthouse’s base until the tower was stabilized with the cables two years later.

An innovative casting method was recently tested on three of the steps on the spiral staircase with much success, Stover said. By melting the original cast iron and blending it with zinc and steel, he said, the resulting product was stronger but still included the “historic fabric” of the stairs.

A total of 21 stair treads will be replaced during the restoration project.

When the lighthouse reopens, the winding spiral staircase will be strong enough to allow 15 people at a time to scale its 205 steps to the deck, where there is a panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean and the marshlands stretching to the Pamlico Sound and Oregon Inlet.

“Look at the view,” Stover said as he gazed out a window two-thirds of the way up the tower.

“It’s still like it was when the keepers were here.”

Activities are free with admission or membership, and include:

• Swift swordplay in mock battles by the Shadow Players Stage Combat Group
• Live Dive in “Davy Jones’ Locker,” aka the Living Shipwreck
• Treasure hunt
• Animal feeding in the Queen Anne’s Revenge
• Tales of the high seas
• Creature Feature live animal program
• Crafts, games and other fun for the younger set
Contact the Pine Knoll Shores aquarium for more information at 866-294-3477 or visit their website at www.ncaquariums.com

From www.zandavisitor.com

Manteo, NC - Construction of the North Carolina Aquariums Jennette’s Pier is moving eastward into the Atlantic Ocean. To keep informed about the progress being made on the pier site, visit this link: http://www.ncaquariums.com/aquarium-piers/jennettes-pier. There you will find information updated regularly along with photos showing different aspects of the construction. The pier construction started in May of 2009 and is expected to be complete by May of 2011.

Jennette’s Pier will be a family oriented educational and recreational fishing pier. It will feature a 1,000 foot long fishing pier, a 16,000 square foot pier house and public bath house. The pier house will have a tackle shop, and educational classroom and large multi-purpose room on the second floor. The upper floor will accommodate large meetings, school groups, conferences, dinners and receptions.

Three wind turbines located on the pier will help power the facility. Solar panels, geothermal heating and cooling and gray water reuse plumbing systems are also among the sustainable green building components featured at the facility.

Jennette’s Pier will educate visitors about the oceans, and it will inspire appreciation and conservation of North Carolina’s aquatic environments. The pier will also be a state of the art recreational fishing facility.

The Aquarium Division of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources will construct the pier with funds from existing non-General Fund receipts of up to $25 million. The funding will come from admission receipts, private funds, and a storm water pilot project to clean up state-maintained ocean outfalls.

Construction of the pier will provide 555 on-site jobs and 1,250 off-site jobs and a benefit of more than $14 million to North Carolina’s economy.

The pier and pier house are aiming to be LEED certified at the level of Gold. The LEED certification process is a national ranking system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council for qualifying the level of sustainability and green building methods.

Inside of NC’s Ocracoke Lighthouse to be renovated - NC Wire: Local & State - News & Observer

MANTEO, N.C. — The federal budget includes $3 million to restore the deteriorating Bodie Island Lighthouse on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.