Cape Cod

Today was our last full day at Pinewood Lodge Campground outside Plymouth, Mass.  We decided to spend the day on Cape Cod. We knew we wouldn't have time to see the entire Cape, so we stopped at the Salt Pond Visitor Center to ask a Park Ranger to point out the highlights.

At the Visitor Center, we did take some time out to walk around the salt marsh and see the ocean.  From there, we went to see the Nauset Light.

We stopped at the site of the old Marconi Station, which was the site of the first transatlantic wireless telegraph station.

Then we went from the ocean across the Cape to the bay side.  Duck Harbor Beach is a beautiful natural beach out on a peninsula known as Great Island, west of the town of Wellfleet. We ate our picnic lunch near the dunes. It was hard to believe we were in the middle of such a big tourist attraction.  We only saw four other people while we were on the beach.

This is the Cape Code Light:

It almost fell into the ocean. The folks in the town of Truro came together to save the light.  They had to move it back 450 feet. In the Visitor Center, we watched a really cool video of the process of moving the light.

The big tourist draw in Provincetown, at the end of the Cape, is the Pilgrim Monument. The climb to the top was slow and steady. Once we got to the top, Dave took this photo looking down the stairwell as it wrapped around the inside walls of the monument. Just thinking about looking over the railing made Kathy's knees weak!

There is a lot to do on the Cape. We only managed to see some of the highlights.  We were afraid it would be very built up and commercial, like the Jersey Shore.  We found the National Seashore area of the Cape to be very wide open. There wasn't as much development as we thought there would be.  However, the town of Provincetown is very old and the streets narrow, but we still managed to get the truck in and out with only one wrong turn requiring the tightest three-point turn ever!

Fungus Family & Friends

Today we took an 8 mile hike in Miles Standish State Forest.  Leaves have started turning now and we saw some brilliant yellows, reds, oranges and golds.

Our hike was a "figure 8," first looping around East Head Reservoir, followed by another loop that passed by several other ponds, known as the Bentley Loop.  Along the way, we encountered several meadows.  It was unclear how the meadows were formed, but we guessed that perhaps they had been bogs or ponds that had dried.  Some of the meadows had dramatic wolf trees.  Here is one:

...and another:

On our hike around the East Head Reservoir, we also found a red maple with 8 trunks!

As we hiked, we saw a number of unique mushrooms.  We decided to take photos of each type of mushroom we encountered.  An album containing photos of 45 different mushrooms we found is located here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151240311605661.512472.667725660&type=1

A Bog Blog

Today, Kathy's friend Jo visited us at our campground in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Jo's grandson Jason came along, too.  They got a tour of the campground and Jason fixed our iPhone.

Then we all piled into Jo's car and drove to the Annual Cranberry Harvest Celebration, put on by the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers' Association.  We weren't sure what the event would be like, but it turned out that this is a BIG event.  Ocean Spray Cranberry has a large facility here, and its headquarters is nearby.  The whole area south and west of Plymouth is filled with cranberry bogs, and the celebration is located in the heart of the bogs.

There was food and entertainment galore.  We even got to see cranberry harvesting in action and understand how the plants grow in the bogs; how the bogs are flooded to make the cranberries float so they can be harvested; and how large vacuum tubes suck them into machines that filter out the berries, which can then be sorted on a conveyor belt.  Here's a photo of workers gathering the berries in the bog (compare the other photos of this same bog from other perspectives, below):

One of the features of the festival is helicopter rides.  The four of us decided to take flight and look at the festival grounds from the air.  Here are Kathy, Jason and Jo in front of the helicopter before their flight:

As the helicopter lifted off, we could see the same bog in which the workers were gathering the berries, which is shown in the photograph above:

Lifting higher, the helicopter headed off to give a bird's eye view of the grounds.  Here is Kathy enjoying a panoramic view including our favorite bog and berries:

The ride was exhiliarating!  Kathy tells the whole story as she motions "thumbs up" after the ride:

After feasting, variously among us, on a pulled pork sandwich (Kathy), chicken fingers and fries (Jason), a burger (Jo), peanut butter and chocolate cinnamon cookies and cranberry-apple crisp (David) and humongous fried dough (Jason again!), we bought some cranberry preserves, cranberry-maple syrup, and fresh cranberries, and headed home, greatly satisfied with all of our happy festivating!

Baxter Rehearsing for Halloween

Martha's Vineyard

We decided to do an overnight on Martha's Vineyard, an island off the coast of Cape Cod. It was only a 45 minute ferry ride from the Cape. We decided that Great White was probably too large for the car ferry, so we brought our bicycles instead.

There are seven town centers on Martha's Vineyard - Aquinnah, Chilmark, Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, Tisbury, West Tisbury (a/k/a Vineyard Haven) and Chappaquiddick.  Since we couldn't see the whole island by bike (it is over 20 miles long), we had to pick which part to visit.  We decided to stay in Oak Bluffs and then bike over to Vineyard Haven one day and than Edgartown the next.

The weather prediction for Thursday changed to rain, but since we had reservations already, we had no choice but to hope for the best.  Here we are approaching the West Chop, which is the western part of the Vineyard Haven harbor. You can see the West Chop Lighthouse in this photo.  It was very cloudy and foggy, but it didn't rain.

After we arrived in Oak Bluffs, we checked into our bed and breakfast, got some lunch at the Offshore Ale Company, and then biked over to Vineyard Haven. We stopped at the East Chop Lighthouse, then biked around the harbor, through Vineyard Haven, to the West Chop Lighthouse. There were lots of big estates on this part of the island.  However, the only folks we saw were gardeners, pool cleaners, carpenters and other service providers. Since the summer season is over, all the rich and famous have left.

We didn't get a chance to stop on Main Street in Vineyard Haven since the rain was expected soon.  However, as soon as we got back to Oak Bluffs, the sun came out. (Well, it came out for five minutes, but at least it didn't rain.) We took a walk around town and found this lovely little neighborhood full of gingerbread cottages. Dave is in front of the smallest (and cutest) one we found.  We learned that there are over 300 gingerbread cottages like these, each decorated uniquely but in the same style.  They are part of the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association, which started with camp meetings on these grounds in the mid 1800's.

After our walk, we ended up going back to Offshore Ale Company for dinner, since we wanted to try their fisherman stew. It was well worth the return trip.

Friday morning started out a little foggy, but soon was a bright sunny day.  After a delicious breakfast at Linda Jean's (which reminded us of Sweet Sue's in Phoenicia, NY), we took the bike path to Edgartown. Here is a shot of the trail as it went along the beach.

Edgartown was a whaling center in the 1800's.  The streets are very narrow and filled with old houses with really beautiful gardens.  There is a really nice museum in town filled with the history of Martha's Vineyard.  After the museum, we pedaled down to see the Edgartown Light.

We had lunch at the Seafood Shanty on the wharf. After lunch we headed back to Oak Bluffs to pick up our bags and catch the ferry. On the ferry ride back, we ran into a couple from Connecticut who spent a week on the island and enjoyed it so much, they plan to return again next year.  It was a good little visit and gave us a sense of what life is like on the island.

Rock of Ages - Plymouth, Massachusetts

Today we did the historic tour of Plymouth.  Of course, it all started here.  The Pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower and landed on Plymouth Rock.  Except that no one knew the ship was called the Mayflower until U.S. historians delved into the records of ships harboring in England and deduced that it must have been Christopher Jones's "Mayflower" due to the time that boat was - and wasn't - docked in London.  And as for Plymouth Rock, well, we all thought it was this big rock the Pilgrims landed on, but, in fact, Plymouth Rock is perhaps 8 feet by 5 feet, and has been mostly buried in the sand since at least the early 1800's, according to historic photographs.

So history isn't exactly as we were taught.  Nevertheless, here is where it all started:

Sometime in the 1800's, someone chiseled "1620" on poor little plymouth rock.  To add to its indignities, someone tried to move the little rock up to the center of town and it broke in half - so they only took half of it up.  The other half lay neglected  in the sand, until decades later, with appropriate remorse, the town fathers took the Prodigal Chunk back down to reunite it with its sibling - and you can see the patch of concrete binding the two together.  Oh, well, history isn't what it was cut out to be.

On the other hand, the "Mayflower II" - an exact replica of the original ship, built in the 1950's and sailed across the Atlantic from England to the U.S. and gifted to us by our English brethren - did not disappoint.  It was really interesting to learn how these 130 people - 102 passengers and 28 crew - lived on this little vessel as it tossed for just over 2 months across the storm swelled waves of late autumn, finally landing in desperation in Plymouth Bay after having missed the mouth of the Hudson River, which was their original goal within the Virginia Colony.  The tour of the boat was well worth it!

But all of that pales in comparison to the good fortune, hard work and tribulations the little colony suffered in order to live down in the history books.  Just half of the original passengers survived until Thanksgiving the next year.  The reconstructed Plimouth Plantation brings it all alive - from the conditions of the European colonists, to the homes of the Native People who greeted them, assisted them, and allied with them, to the animals they husbanded, the vegetables and herbs they grew, the potage and soups they cooked, and the pottery, woodwork and metalwork they crafted.  While the reconstructed Plimouth Plantation is on a hill 2.5 miles from the location of the original colony (buried under the buildings currently set in the center of the town of Plymouth, it nevertheless provided a genuine recreation of the colony and life within it.

Our travel through history began with a drive in our truck to Plimouth Plantation.  From there, we left the truck in the parking lot and bicycled the 2.5 miles down to the center of Plymouth, where we at a wonderful beef sandwich at Ali's Galley on Main Street.  Ali herself was very kind and provided recommendations to us on a place to toss back a brew - the Driftwood, further down on Main Street - as well as free coupons to some attractions.  From Ali's Galley, we biked down to Mayflower II, toured it, then headed up to the Pilgrim Hall Museum.  This last attraction has an incredible collection of actual relics from the Plymouth colony and is well worth visting.  After Pilgrim Hall Museum, we stopped at the Driftwood for a brew.  Contrary to the forecast, by the time we finished our beers and came back out to our bikes, it was pouring rain!  So we pedalled (yes, Mark, pedalled, not peddled, nor petaled) back up to Plimouth Plantation, hopped in our truck, and hightailed it home to the RV, where we nested in warmth and comfort to reminisce over what we learned today.

And so ends another adventure. What will tomorrow bring?

Cape Cod Canal Bike Ride

Can we tell you how nice it is to see the sun after three days straight of rain. Our friends Claudia and Charles came to visit on Saturday.  Our cook-out turned into a cook-in. However, that didn't dampen our spirits as we had a chance to catch up.

Monday, October 1st dawned clear and bright. We really wanted to get out and get some exercise.  We decided to explore the Cape Cod Canal and Bike Path. Being from Philadelphia, we never heard of this before.  The canal runs seven miles from Buzzards Bay to Cape Code Bay.  By taking the canal, boats can save over 130 miles of sea travel.  Back in the day when mules pulled barges, there were tow paths on either side of the canal.  Today, those tow paths are now paved and open for biking.

We started our bike adventure at the Cape Cod Canal Visitor's Center in Sandwich, Mass.  (Yes, there are sandwich shops in Sandwich.)  It was just a short walk from the visitor's center to the beach on Cape Cod Bay.  If you look really, really hard, you can see Provincetown at the end of the Cape.

The wind today was pretty stiff.  We had to peddle into the wind to get from Cape Cod Bay to Buzzards Bay. We decided to peddle on the sunny side of the canal.  That required crossing over the canal on Sagamone Bridge.  Dave stopped for a picture from the middle of the bridge.

Kathy, on the other hand, continued to peddle furiously across the bridge not stopping until she reached solid ground on the other side.  While not totally afraid of heights, crossing over a really, really high bridge on a bicycle with only a narrow sidewalk, a view straight down to the water, all while cars streamed past at 50 miles an hour was just about the limit of her endurance.

Here is Kathy pointing up to where here near death experience took place.  Keep in mind, we had to go back across the bridge to return to the car.

At the far end of the canal is the old railroad bridge.  This bridge is really cool.  The tracks go up and down like an elevator.  These tracks weigh 2,200 pounds and there are 1,100 lb counter weights on each end.

The seven mile ride back to Cape Cod Bay was nice since the wind was at our backs. We pedalled past many groups of cormorants, sunning and drying their wings.  Some were perched up on light poles.  Others were on rocks in the canal.  Still others lined up along booms floating in the water at the local power plant.  Seagulls were numerous, and very fat.  The gulls on the jetty and breakwater weren't scared of us at all, and even let us get within about 8 feet of them as we walked atop the rocks.

We noticed that there were a number of RV parks along the north side of the Canal, even out at the point on Cape Cod Bay.  We hadn't found these when we were hunting for a campground in this area, and they looked as if they would have been very nice places.  But they were pretty full, and, as Kathy noted, when you're that full and popular, you don't need to advertise - and so we never heard about them.

At Cape Cod Bay (eastern) end of our ride along the north side of the canal, we walked out on the breakwater out into the bay. It was two miles back to the Sagamore Bridge and then up and over back to the south side where the truck was parked. Needless to say, Kathy survived the ride back even if she ended up walking the bike for part of the way.

So, we biked a total of about 20 miles and enjoyed many interesting sights!

The cats were excited to see us, since we had been with them for three days straight.

Tomorrow, we are going to do the tourist thing in Plymouth.