A week on Cape Cod

Well, here we go again. It may not be a part of the big picture but a week long trip is better than no trip at all. We are headed for the Cape (Cape Cod Massachusetts if you are not from New England). I got a phone call last weekend from my cousin Jan in Michigan. She and her husband Dave told us they were heading out to the Cape (they called it Cape Cod because they were not from around here). We were just looking for an excuse to go on vacation so we were excited. One small problem though; we did not have our motorhome back from the shop and had not heard a word since we left it there in November (?). (We had been wondering when we would hear from them with some status) We took a drive up to Lebanon and dropped in. They recognized us the minute we walked through the door. I asked if we had visitation rights with our camper and after a chuckle or two they said: (are you ready for this?) “Guess what? We just got your camper back from the paint shop this morning.” (Would you have expected anything else?).

We looked over the work that had been done and gave them a couple of other things to do and said we would pick it up on the next Friday. We had no plans to go off on Memorial Day so we planned to spend Memorial Day weekend getting the Beast ready to off on another adventure. It seems almost criminal to head out with only a weeks planning when I took years to plan the Alaska trip. I have made reservations, looked over some of the Cape’s web sites and plugged the coordinates into the navigation program and studied the route. While it wasn’t exactly the way I would have gone, it looked like a better route for a motorhome than the one I would have used.

The beast has returned to Emery’s Bridge Road! I picked it up on Friday and drove it home. It feels good to once again have it in the driveway. It is Memorial Day Weekend. The usual Memorial Day activities are now complete and we are desperately trying to get the camper ready for use. It always seems that there is never enough time to get ready for any trip. Either we don’t have the motorhome or we are so busy that there isn’t enough time to get ready.

Ok gang, here is the real thing. As we speak, I am sitting under the early morning (8:30, not early by most people’s standards but you have to realize, this is the first day of our vacation) sun on the Cape. It is breezy with a thin overcast and a little on the coolish side. It is quiet here. I am sure that this last weekend was just the opposite but the neat thing about being retired is that I can come when everyone else is somewhere else. Oh, yea, the people that are here are retired too so they don’t get up early and raise hell picking up all the beer cans from last night.

The trip down was pretty uneventful. The most exciting thing was the gas stop. The beast was just touching on empty when I pulled into BJs (with an 80 gallon tank, you look for every penny you can save and BJs was on the way) to fill up. One of the things I have noticed since getting the Beast is that most you-pump-it gas stations have a limit on the amount you can get on one entry of the card. Mostly it is $75 (but I did find $50 and $100 on last year’s trip). BJs was no exception. I had to enter the card 3 times to fill it up. It took 71 gallons so I now know that I have less than 10 gallons in the tank when the needle hits the empty mark (good to know). I had to wait a while to get into the pumps since I needed both bays to be empty. Several times I got one bay empty only to have someone behind me go around and take the spot. The man running the gas service had to come out and physically stop the cars from going around me until I got a double place to park. I tied up those 2 spots for 15 to 20 minutes. A gas delivery truck took up the two spaces on the other side of the pumps from me. Together we tied up a whole island (out of 3). I did my part though and bought $200 worth of gas.

Back on the road, we finally started making progress. The early part of the trip was spent dreading driving through Boston. We had started several hours later than we had planned (never have 15 people over for supper the night before you plan on leaving for a trip) because we just weren’t ready. We kind of loaded on the fly and figured we would straighten everything out when we got there (it worked on the Alaska trip but then we had 4 months to straighten everything out (there were still a few things that never did find a home)).

We headed out 128 (they may call it 95 now but it will always be 128 to me) and caught 93 and headed for Boston. Boston was heavy traffic but it kept moving and we were soon cruising by the Kennedy Museum (one chorus of “Moving Right Along” by the Muppets if you please). We encountered moderately heavy traffic up to the “split” and only slightly lighter traffic afterwards. There is a place where the road (to the Cape) goes from 3 lanes to 2 lanes and the traffic seemed to have trouble figuring that one out so we moved at about 10 mph for about 15 minutes. As the traffic started to clear up, we saw 8 State Police cruisers with one car pulled over. They certainly weren’t looking for speeders as the traffic was going about 5 mph for 2 miles.

The road then went from 2 lanes to 1 with little difficulty. Along the way we passed several noteworthy places. Plymouth Plantation (home of Plymouth Rock) and Nantasket Beach (a swinging place often talked about on AM Rock Radio in the late 50s and early 60s). Soon we passed Orleans and entered Eastham. Finding our campground was easy and when we walked into the office, they handed us a sheet with our names on it and said: “The Estabrookes are here!”. We looked at each other and then looked back at the nice lady with obvious wonder on our faces. I suppose they weren’t all that busy, we had reservations and had Maine plates on a 35 foot motorhome. I guess it wasn’t all that hard to figure out but it certainly threw us for a loop.

We soon found our campsite as well as Jan and Dave who were already there event though they had said they probably wouldn’t be there until mid evening. We had the usual family haven’t seen each other for years greetings and news catch up and then set up. We then headed down the road in search of lobster (Jan’s weakness). Several places were not open (apparently just open on weekends this time of the year) but we found a place called the Lobster Claw that seemed to be what we were looking for. They advertised fried lobster and lobster newburg on the marquis for 11.95. The special was about the only cheap thing on the menu. A boiled lobster was $25 and their “famous” clambake was $34. The “lobster fanatic” ordered scallops (go figure).

The fried lobster was good. I think I would rather have a boiled or baked stuffed lobster but considering the price difference, the fried lobster was good. If lobsters crossed the road around here, I would have suspected that it was roadkill but as my pappy once said: “Never look a gift lobster in the …… ok, my father never said that”.

We then drove down to the old coast guard station and watched the full moon out over the ocean. It was spectacular. That big old moon leaving a sparkling trail across the ocean.

Slept like a baby last night. The temperature was just right for sleeping and we were tired enough to crash and burn. I noticed that MSNBC has a new morning show. IMUS may be gone but Chuck (the news guy) and Chris (the sports guy) are on a new show hosted by Joe Scarborough. He interviews pretty much the same people that IMUS interviewed but gone is the biting satirical edge. Joe is playing this one straight up and serious. I miss the old IMUS edge even if it occasionally went too far.

Well, its time to say goodbye for now. A new day awaits and whatever adventures that brings. Talk last night was that we might head out to P-Town (Provincetown) for the day. I suspect we will hunt for some lobsters to cook here at camp tonight but who knows….it is another day!

Good morning! Another day is in the books. It was a slow start. It takes a few days to get into the swing of this. I made breakfast and sat outside writing yesterday’s entry. It got cooler and breezier so when we decided to head off to Provincetown, I changed into warmer clothes and off we went. It was after 11 when we got started. We made a picnic lunch and hit the road. We checked out some of the side roads along the way. Piers and fishing boats and narrow winding roads.

When we came through Kittery on our way down, we noticed that Taylor’s Fish Market was listing lobster at $7.99 a pound with a note lauding the drop in prices (wish the gasoline places had the same policy). That drop has not apparently hit the Cape. We have found $10.99/lb here. Of course, this is still better than restaurants.

Provincetown was an interesting place. Expecting another York Beach or Old Orchard Beach clone, I was surprised to find a narrow winding road along the beach with old small shops spread into subvillages. They are known as the East Village and the West Village. Originally one was for the Portuguese fishing families and the other was for ship captains and merchants. Now they are all full of shops, restaurants and places to stay. There was a large monument to the Pilgrims there. It is the largest granite tower in the country and commerates the first landing of the Pilgrims and the signing of the Mayflower Compact which was done on the ship in the harbor. After exploring the area for a month, they moved on to Plymouth. They did not find what they needed to live in the Provincetown area specifically fresh water.

The monument is made even more spectacular by being on a hill overlooking the ocean from 3 sides. We explored the town and the shops and walked up to the monument on our way back to the car. We almost didn’t make it. It seems that there is no way to get to the parking lot from the monument. We ended up cutting through a schoolyard and climbing down a sand bank but we were successful and did not get arrested.

On our way back, we stopped at Coast Guard Beach. There were a few cars there and almost no one on the beach. It was pretty but gravelly with almost no waves. We headed down the road to Truro and turned off at the lighthouse there. It is in the middle of a golf course. It was moved several years ago because it was about to fall into the ocean. The company that moved the lighthouse on the outer banks moved this one first. It was moved over 400’ back. Its signature is a white light every 5 seconds. We climbed up and were rewarded with a spectacular view on every side. There was a smallish granite tower we could see from lighthouse. It is called the Jenny Lind Tower. Jenny Lind was a famous opera singer (known as the Swedish Nightingale) who was managed by P. T. Barnum. He had arranged a tour for her. He was famous for overselling any house she sang in. As the story goes, he greatly overbooked the hall in Fitchburg, Mass and there were a large number of very angry, very loud customers who could not get in. Jenny Went across the street to the railway station and climbed into a tower that was part of the building and sang to her fans that were unable to get into the concert. A rich man of the times bought the tower from the railway station and moved it to the Cape where he reconstructed it.

All of this traveling was followed by an old fashioned New England traditional dinner (even if it wasn’t Saturday) of beans and hot dogs (cooked over the wood fire). After dinner, we sat around the fire and abused marshmallows. It was great until we ran out of wood and found out that the camp store closed at 6 and we had no more wood so we went to bed.

Friday dawned bright and sunny. Following waffles and bacon, we planned out our activities for the rest of the trip. Jan wanted to do a whalewatch, Dave wanted to go fishing, Jan wanted to go to either Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, Newport and Mystic, Cheryl was easy, she wanted to do anything. I was willing to do most anything but I wanted some down time. Today we decided to go whalewatching. We looked over the brochures we had collected and decided to try the Dolphin Fleet trip. The timing was the best (no one wanted to get up early) and they had a discount coupon so we called and made a reservation. They recommended the noon trip as it was the least crowded. We played around camp for the morning and then set out for P-Town. We parked on the pier. There was a large lot ($25 for the day) and right next to it, hidden by the entrance to the pier was a smallish lot that was $10. No discussion was needed. We pulled into the $10 lot, gathered up our backpacks full of jackets, binoculars and water and headed off to watch the whales (do you think they watch back?).

We shed clothes as we walked to the boat but as soon as the boat started to move, we put them all back on. Cheryl and I sat in the bow as there was a long bowsprit that we intended to watch the whales from. Dave and Jan headed for the upper deck. We sailed around the curlicue end of the cape and headed South. Just beyond the next turn of the cape, we sailed off into the ocean where there is a massive feeding ground for the whales. They go south to the Caribbean for the winter and to mate and have their babies. The water there has little food in it so they always return home to the cold life filled waters of the North. Once we hit the feeding grounds it wasn’t long before we spotted a couple of whales. The boat turned in their direction and soon we slowed and watched them skim near the surface. We had found a pair of Humpbacks. They didn’t go very deep and just cruised along the surface sending streams of mist into the air when they surfaced. Their front flippers were white and you could watch them move around by keeping your eye on the white flippers (they looked green because of the water) under the water. We were dying to see one of those classic tail poses but they wouldn’t cooperate. Soon, one of them was coming up out of the water and rolling before splashing back into the water. He (or she) did this about a dozen times. When he would do this, it looked like he was waving to us with his front flippers (that looked to be about 8 feet long). The other joined in for a few rolls and then they just seemed to lay in the water for a while. The naturalist said they didn’t know why they did this but the theory was that it aided in their digestive process. I may not know but it was certainly fun to watch. Then we hit the mother lode. The more active of the 2 Humpbacks did a full breach. He came straight up almost completely out of the water, hovered in the air and fell over on his back with a huge splash. Everyone held their breath and there was a great sigh. This was rare to see and was spectacular. I have been on several whalewatches and have never seen either of these behaviors.

Soon we headed off to see what else we could find. After a few minutes, we saw several spouts all over the horizon. There were also a huge flock of seagulls. We were told that the presence of the gulls meant that the whales were feeding. That was good news. They were active. There was one whale that the Naturalist recognized. He (they told us that this one was male) was very recognizable as he had a unique coloration on his tail, had a chunk of his tail missing and had signs of an Orca (killer whale) attack on his dorsal fins. We watched this group of whales for quite some time. They would cast a bubble net (a behavior that has one or more whales working together go deep and circle blowing bubbles in the water. The bubbles would confuse the fish and other sea creatures so that they would remain in the center of the bubble net. Eventually, the whale (s) would swim under the middle of the net and head towards the surface with their mouths open collecting everything in their path. They would then linger on the surface with their mouths partially open draining out the water and keeping the fish inside. I had read about it but had never seen it. It was really neat. We watched this several times before heading back to shore.

It was a perfect day. In all the whale watches I have been on, I have never seen the things we saw on this trip. In talking to the Naturalist, she has been studying whales for years and has been doing these whale watches for 3 years and she said she had never seen the things we saw today. Jan and Dave had never been on a whale watch (not too many of them get to the Great Lakes). I told them to never go on another because nothing would top this one (the Naturalist agreed). The only drawback to the day was that by sitting out in the open, I got sunburned on my face and head (not bad but definitely red). I suppose this is the same syndrome that causes people to drive so badly in the first snowstorm of r
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Back on shore, we searched for an ice cream. Another victory (Gifford’s to boot)! Fully satisfied we set out to climb back up to the Pilgrim Monument. Like the Pilgrims, we were determined to reach our goal. We climbed the hill to the museum and monument, paid our admission and headed for the monument. After a few sets of stairs, we discovered that the bulk of the climb was on ramps with one or two steps at the corners. After about 20 minutes, we reached the top and were rewarded by spectacular views from all directions.

It is interesting. In several of these tall monuments, they have screened in the entire top. There only seem to be 2 reasons for this: first it keeps people from using the monument to meet their maker or help someone else to meet theirs and second it keeps accidents from happening. This all seems relatively useless because the inside of the monument has the same drop as the outside and there are no precautions there at all. Go figure!

On the way back to camp, we stopped for adult beverages and wood. We did imbibe the adult beverages but we never got to burn the wood. About as soon as we hit camp, the thunderbumpers were a'rumbling and the rain was falling so hard you couldn’t see far. We had supper and watched a movie (can’t do that in a tent). Another day in the books. This trip is sailing right along.

Another day dawns. Ham, cheese, red onion and pepper scramble served with fresh baked muffins (can’t do that in a tent either). We went for a bike ride this morning. The Cape Cod Rail Trail passes right by our campground. 22 miles of paved fairly flat bike trail. Nice riding! We ran into lots of bikers, a few walkers and 2 inline skaters. Then Jan and Dave went deep sea fishing and Cheryl and I took the afternoon off. We warmed up some of the leftover pizza from the other night, had some toll house cookies that my mother sent along and watched Casino Royale. There was a lot written about this movie but I found it to be pretty good. I thought the new Bond was more menacing than even the great one (Connery) but less humorous (oh way less). It was nice to finally see the last of the Fleming books get a serious treatment (a different group had the rights to this story and made a spoof out of it). We did some housework and I have been writing while Cheryl reads.

Well, I guess that catches me up to the present. Nap time! See ya!!