This month, I will have officially lived on the island of Nantucket for three years. I would say in that time, I’ve accomplished maybe half of the things on my Nantucket bucket list (and most of them involve eating so I don’t know if that counts). Well in February, we checked off another as Steve drove us and our friends Jessica and Jonathan (and our respective pups, of course) out to Great Point to check out the lighthouse!

Okay, disclaimer: I have been to Great Point one and a half times already. The one time was on Easter 2015, but it was dusk and I could barely see anything, let alone take photos. The half time was when we tried to take our friends Alisa and Kevin out there and Steve’s engine overheated and we had to turn back. Oops.

Nantucket has three lighthouses, and Great Point is by far the most challenging to get to. It sits on the very tip of the island on the Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge. You need a certain type of car that can drive through sand (which is very soft), a special permit, and you have to let a bunch of the air out of your tires before you hit the beach.

The lighthouse was built in the late 1700s, and it still operates today (with helpful modern additions like solar panels). Nantucket doesn’t have a lot of particularly large structures, so at seventy feet high, it’s definitely a sight to see!

We brought lunch with us and used our convenient L.L. Bean compact camp table to enjoy our meal by the lighthouse.

Given its remoteness (and the fact that it was February) it was nice to be totally alone on the beach and let the pups run free. Normally I’m worried about Schooner stealing beach toys from small children or going up to old people and barking in their faces, so that was a nice change.

I somehow forgot to ask someone to take a photo of me. But I promise, I was there.

The only company you really have to worry about there? The seals. So many seals! Frankly, I think this is what Jessica and I were most excited to see out there! Since it’s mostly unoccupied, seals just like hang out there all day long. I was worried that Schooner would try and attack them (after all, they are “pups”) but he wasn’t particularly intrigued.

I kept pushing my luck, trying to get as close to the seals as possible to get photos. Like seriously, when again in my life will I ever do this?! Totally worth a potential seal attack (I’ve heard they’re pretty mean and territorial when provoked).

If anything, the seals were quite aloof. Every once in awhile they would check us out, and then turn back around like they couldn’t care less that we were there. I found this adorable.

Sometimes I wish I was a seal. Sun bathing on the beach, a few dips in the ocean. They just look so content hanging out there all day!

Can we talk about the spots? I loved the spotted ones! They were like little dalmatians. And by little, I mean they were kind of gigantic (you would be too, if you just laid around all the time).

I seriously wanted to take that piece of driftwood home. I swear you would pay thousands of dollars for a chandelier made out of it from one of the fancy home stores downtown.

All in all, it was a great day (especially when you think about what the weather was like a year ago in February – yikes), and definitely a quintessential ACK-perience that we won’t soon forget.

If you can make the trip out there, I definitely recommend it because it’s a totally unique experience and not something that all of the usual Nantucket day-tripping tourists are able to do. Just watch out for those seals.

Until next time,

~L