Dixon Hill Lighthouse and Lighthouse Cave

Dixon Hill Lighthouse. Photo by Rachel

 Take a look at dat shadow! The person in the bottom right corner is on the first balcony level and I'm standing on the second (super illegal, oops). If you look closely, you can see eensy-teensy Ashley in the shadow of the lighthouse. Photo by Maryevalyn

 Little lighthouse windows DAWHH. Photo by Maryevalyn 

 Prism arcs and the lightbulb that lights up the skyy!! Photo by Maryevalyn

View from inside the prism lenses. Photo by Rachel

Anna, Matt, Morgan and everyone inside the cave. Photo by Maryevalyn

Payne, Dr. Ruhl, and Amanda -- inside the Cave! Photo by Rachel

Hello all! This is a joint post from Amanda Anthony and Maryevalyn Wren. We are going to use a dialogue format to tell you readers about the places we explored this morning. I (Maryevs) will be typing in bold and Amanda will be in normal type face. This is an experiment and our professors don't know about it, but we figured we'd give it a shot. Try to keep up, okay? Okay.

First stop of the day was on the northeast side of the island. *que theme music* DIXON HILL LIGHTHOUSE! 

Wait, what is our theme music? We need to YouTube "lighthouse theme music."

The lighthouse was built in 1886 on top of Dixon Hill. It is 172 feet tall, which puts it at an elevation of 253 feet above sea level. 

It's very high up in the air. Sometimes when you go out on to the balcony, you get scared. The wind is blowing and you WILL blow off if you're a skinny person. Luckily, that didn't happen to me, but I'd like to know how many times it has happened in the past. 

It was super duper windy, you guys. I went to the very top balcony and ---

Wait, it's only 172 feet tall?? It seemed more like a million.

--- and I almost died because HOLY MOSES the view was fantastic. Beautifully clear, blue-green water surrounds San Sal. It's hard to believe it's real, sometimes. Like, hashtag no filter. 

#island #realness #couture 

We quickly found out the top balcony is understandably off-limits. So we promptly climbed back down to pseudo-safety, aka 162 feet off the ground. One thing I didn't know about lighthouses is that each one has its own flash patterns. Dixon Hill Lighthouse beams a double flash every ten seconds. The arc prisms direct the light out to sea and can be seen up to nineteen miles away.

ALL THE WORLD CAN SEE THE LIGHT. What I thought was cool was that those lenses were so big and the lightbulb inside was so tiny! Like, all this light is from these prisms and this little lightbulb. They work together as a support group!

Lighthouse keeping is a profession that is passed down from generation to generation. The keeper must climb up the spiral staircase that winds along the inside wall of the structure and rotate the base of the light, which is rests on a bed of mercury and is powered by falling weights.

What's really sad is that the keepers would get mercury poisoning. They had to go up there every two hours and the exposure to the mercury over time was fatal. 

Okay, we should talk about the cave now. Let's not end on this somber note, though. 

Okay. The Lighthouse Cave was a flank-margin cave that was intersected by a solution pit. It was formed in the 5e highstand, about 125,000 years ago. There are bats in the cave, that's really cool. I didn't find out exactly what kind of bats we saw, but when I researched, I found that there are three species of bats here that are also found in Arkansas. I was pretty excited about that. But, I didn't actually see the bat close enough to be able to tell what it was. It just looked like a bat. But I don't think it was a red bat. It was brown.

Excellent ... Way to be a scientist. That explains the guano everywhere inside the cave. The cave has a large central chamber with radial horizontal passage ways that end abruptly.

We went during low-tide, but the water inside the cave was still kinda high. What was your experience in the cave?

I loved seeing all the speleothems and walking through the sea water! It was cool to find out how the cave was used in the past. Its location and high elevation provided shelter and protected locals during hurricanes. And I liked crawling through the tiny passage horizontal passage ways.

After walking through the jungle, the lush jungle of San Salvador, Bahamas, we finally found the cave. At first I thought, "What is THIS?! It just looks like a hole in the ground. Oh, wait, someone put a ladder here." We then used the ladder to *cave theme music* descend into the cave; it was very humid. That confused me because I thought caves were supposed to be cool, but whatever. I thought, "You just do your thing, cave. You're just doin' you, cave. Okay."

Yeah, the humidity surprised me, too. It should be noted here that some of our group was very uncomfortable with traversing through the watery region of the cave. It was very cold and at some points got up to four feet deep. We are all very proud of our classmates who conquered fears of bats, tight spaces, murky water, the cold, the dark, and overall discomfort today by braving the cave! Ooid awards for all of you. Such guano. Very water.

Much speleothem. Wow.

Thanks for reading you guys! Pay attention to the photos if the wordy part is too much to handle. Amanda and I are kind of out of it tonight (due to benadryl and general ADD probz). We are definitely 'on island time' now, and are glad to be here and never want to leave! 

Shout-out to lighthouse keepers all around the world, yo. Keepin' it real. And stalactites and stalagmites for just chillin' in caves for thousands of years.

Also, a big thank you to Dr. Ruhl for leading us through the cave today!

Thanks Dr. Ruhl!

Goodnight readers, from Maryevalyn, Amanda, and this entire beautiful place.