Day 56: Vistas that won't crash your computer.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

So remember when I said that the elusive concept known as "the dark" and I weren't on the best of terms? Maybe fooling around in an old Civil War fort wasn't the best way to handle that. And then the guy that works at Georges Island jumped out at a friend and I from atop a dark and creepy staircase. Okay, so he didn't really "jump out" at us, but he did appear from nowhere and make me jump out of my skin.

But to his credit, he did tell us to just go exploring, since really not all that much was cordoned off. And explore we did. In fact, we got right down to the seawall, via some paths that were probably not intended for human traffic. It figured — after we got some great seascape photos, we found the easy way to get there.

The fort was really interesting - not surprisingly, I found it much like a very hands-on museum. And you all know how museums and I go hand-in-hand. This one just had some really dark and scary (and probably haunted) corners I wasn't going to even approach. I used the flash on my camera several times just to know what was at the top of the staircase I was climbing.

But the best pictures from the day came from Spectacle Island. We hoofed it really quickly up the taller of the two hills that compose the island, and it turned out we were alone in choosing that hill. So we took some brilliant shots of the city skyline from the highest point in the Boston Harbor, and discussed which would be cooler up there, a concert or a marriage proposal. And then we picked some wild blackberries on the path back down. Just make sure you can spot the differences between blackberries and poison sumac, because there was a lot of that, too.

We only got to visit two of the islands, but I'm sold. I thought it was a nice little way to offer a "farewell" to the city I love before I depart in a week — to step outside the city's clear limits and look back upon it from above and afar. I'm really in the heart of the home stretch now, and I'm getting sentimental. Someone slap me.