July 14 – Finishing up projects

Keeper’s Log 7/14/23 Friday Barb Falkenhagen reporting again

Day 7 for me. Day 14 for Tom McBride and Marty Rosalik

Today was cooler than the past couple days.

7:20am temperature 62 degrees.

Winds 5-10 mph out of the SW.

Humidity is high. And it rained this morning. We had a short but powerful thunderstorm.

After breakfast and the rain, we climbed the skeletal tower(the newer tower), and removed another battery not in use. Removed any tools we had used there and secured the door to the parapet as the lock mechanism had been removed last week for repairs or restoration. We brought the ladder down and tucked it back into it’s home in the fog signal building. It’s amazing how much longer things take you to accomplish than you think.

After lunch Marty and I worked in the lantern room again after gathering paint supplies to prime the bottom of the lantern room walls. We vacuumed, wiped down the iron then primed. Marty then began working on finding something he could use for a grab handle when you are coming up the stairs into the lantern room and caulking the gap we found between two of the panels.

Tom fixed a screen and a piece of metal siding in the cupola of the fog signal building then headed down to work on the boat landing area. He enlarged it more than originally planned, by a couple feet, then started hauling zebra muscles shells to put on top. I helped gather and level shells. One load was 8 five gallon pails of shells. I helped with 4 loads. I don’t know how many loads Tom had done before I got down there. The shells breakup finely when driven over and make a nice surface for the tractor to stage on when moving things from the keeper’s quarters or fog signal building down to the beach.

While we were up the new tower this morning we saw several herons fly over. Great Blue Herons I think.