Ponce Inlet, Florida

We were having that overwhelming need for some more salt-water therapy, so we decided to head to Ponce Inlet, Florida. 💦

Ponce Inlet has a beautiful white sand beach and some great fishing! While we weren’t doing any fishing this time around, we’ve fished there before and had a blast. 🎣

In addition to our beach therapy, we decided to venture to the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse. This was our first time touring the lighthouse and we loved it! There is also a museum there and the grounds were amazing! We took the self-guided walking tour and really enjoyed it. 💕

We started with the lighthouse, of course! At 175 feet tall, this is the tallest lighthouse in Florida! 🤯 We were excited to climb the 203 steps to reach the top and see the grounds from above. (I’m getting better with the heights issue I have, but my hands were still shaking, lol.) 😉

On our way up, we learned about the death of Joseph B. Davis as a Keeper at the lighthouse. 😔 He was climbing the steps to light the lamp, but had heart failure and died. After paying our respects, we moved on with our climb. 🪜

There were a few additional steps that took us to the Third Order Fresnel Lens. I’m a serious lighthouse geek and these lenses are beyond exciting to me! Seeing an operational third order lens up close and personal was incredible! 🤩

The rest of the family was out on the gallery deck as I was admiring my lens, so I went out to join them. Unlike the previous lighthouses we toured, the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse is caged in. This actually made me feel more secure, and the view was still incredible! 😎

After we made our way back down, we needed to explore the grounds. We found some amazing things to learn about! We had fun visiting the Keeper’s Dwellings, Outbuildings, Pump House, Generator Building, and Oil Storage Building. Our favorite building (besides the lighthouse) was the Lens Exhibit Building. 🥰

In the Lens Exhibit Building, there was an extensive collections of Fresnel lenses.🔦 They even had the Ponce Inlets original first order Fresnel lens from 1887 and the rotating first order Fresnel lens from Cape Canaveral. Some people might not get too excited about lighthouse lenses, but it was amazing to us! These were super cool! 😁

After all this excitement, we were getting a bit tired and ready to be on our way to our next adventure. We drove to the hotel and started making plans to see what we could explore next… 🤔

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Thanks so much and stay tuned for more Traveling with the Trapps!

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