Out to the Cape

Provincetown, MA

Another fine, clear morning this morning, thank goodness, so it seems our last full day will be a nice one. All-in-all, you can’t really complain at two days of rain and one cloudy day in the eight we have been here so far!

A long trip planned today, all the way from Newport R.I. to Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod and back again – over 200 miles as a round trip. However, it’s a good day for a trip to the seaside! It’s also somewhere I have always wanted to see.

The first 3/4 of the journey was spent on the interstates, so it was boring and fast. Even when we reached the Mid-Cape Highway, it was essentially like driving through a tunnel of trees for mile after mile. Considering the sea is on either side for quite a lot of the journey, it’s not until the very end that you actually get to see any of it. After a while, being fed up of trees, we turned off the Mid-Cape and headed towards the National Seashore (as the protected part is known) at Nauset Beach. There was a lighthouse and spectacular views along a very deserted beach for miles in either direction.

Heading back to the highway, we hadn’t gone very far when we spotted a milling of people and a sign ‘flea market’ so we quickly stopped. It seems that Sunday mornings are spent at car boot sales on both sides of the Atlantic! Tat was perused, tat wasn’t bought. So far, so Sunday normal. In fact no-one seemed to be putting their hands in their pockets much.

Curiosity satiated, we were back on the road for Provincetown, arriving just before lunch. The whole place was quite busy and finding parking was difficult, but because we’re hopeless at spotting signs we ended up parking separate from most other folks and for free too. A good result for an extra 5 mins walk.

Provincetown seems to be a lovely little, ‘boho’ town at the very end of the Cape, full of galleries and museums and shops selling very expensive tat to rich Bostonian holidaymakers. It had a very end of season feel to it and a few places were boarded up ready to resist the winter storms. I think the unseasonable warm weather and crowds of trippers had taken them a little by surprise. We spent the whole afternoon just looking round or sitting in the sun, and it was only when the afternoon wore on that we decided to run back to Newport for tea. Coming back was somehow quicker than going, even thought the traffic actually stopped in a few places on the highway due to the sheer volume of cars. However, they soon disappeared when the roads split for Boston in the North and the rest of us in the South.

I wouldn’t have minded more time to explore the Cape Cod region and do it more justice. A couple of weeks in the spring or late summer looking round the beaches, taking the ferries out to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, going on a whale watching trip or two, and poking round the little towns such as Hyannis and Woods Hole… sounds like it might be a plan for the future!