Day 17 - Boston to Cape Cod

I was up a little after 6:00am and we were on the road shortly after 7:00am. The logistics involved dropping Lee’s car at her work (ready for Monday) then we all continued on to Cape Cod in Nina’s car. We managed to reach and cross the bridge over the man made canal that separates Cape Cod from the “mainland” before the weekend traffic built up enough to make it the bottleneck that it eventually becomes.


After a stop for a late breakfast about 9:00am we reached our lodgings, the Braemar Lodge in North Truro, where we dumped our stuff before heading on to Highlands Beach and staking out our jungle camouflaged shade umbrella. Lee was hopeful of catching some waves on the boogie boards but the sea had that almost dead flat look about it that would have had Sam pulling out the skim board! Nevertheless I joined a heavily zinc covered Lee in the rather nippy late summer waters for a bit of a float and a couple of futile attempts to get one of the small waves to shift my carcass in a shoreward direction, not helped by having to be careful how much weight I put on my right shoulder in the process. Nina joined us in the “surf” after a while but in the end I had to concede that Lee’s tolerance of (acclimatisation to?) numb feet was greater than mine. I retired to one of the beach chairs and managed to get a couple of photos of Lee and Nina catching some waves – I put it down to their weight advantage rather than my poor technique! Despite the head start, Lee still outlasted Nina, so Nina and I chatted as Lee continued to defy the chilly waters.

By now it was time to give some serious consideration to lunch, so leaving our umbrella set up we hot footed it (literally) across the midday sand to the car and drove to a nearby eatery for some tasty comestibles. Sustenance completed we drove back to our lodgings where I was now able to check into my separate room. After a bit of a rest and a Coors we drove back to the beach where Lee explored new ground in the beach fashion stakes by going boogie boarding with a hat and snorkel mask. Actually the boogie board was superfluous to requirements as it was now high tide and the sea was even flatter than it had been earlier.

After we had packed up, returned to our lodgings, and washed away the salt and sunscreen we headed into sample the nightlife of Provencetown. The “World’s Coolest Dad” t-shirt Sam gave me in Philadelphia was pressed into service for the occasion– because it was the only clean t-shirt I had left. Lee apparently has a long standing weakness for browsing gift shops and so didn’t need any encouraging to go along with my desire to go shopping for a lizard. And so it came to pass that in the shell shop Lee had suggested I found the perfect specimen, which also happened to be the only one in the shop. He will no doubt earn the moniker of “Bluey”!

Sunset over Provencetown

We did consider climbing the Pilgrim Memorial Tower but discovered that is closed at 7:00pm. So I took a few sunset photos from the pier before enjoying a very nice dinner at the Art House Café. We also enjoyed the passing parade in the busy main drag – with drag actually being the key theme! There were a number of drag queens parading up and down drumming up business for the burlesque shows at some of the night clubs. It seems that Cape Cod is no longer just the hang out of the rich and famous. An occasional car would crawl along the street crowded with pedestrians, the drivers no doubt noting that they must never again try and drive up this street in the evenings!

Back at Braemar Lodge Lee enjoyed a bit of reminiscence and a few chuckles looking through my images of the South East Asia trip on which we had met in 1987. However it had been a long day after an early start and we had to call it quits before we had finished the slide show.