Cape Cod Bright

In addition to the high carbon footprint activities we did while vacationing on Cape Cod, Mary and I had done some research on a few day hikes that we could take in.  Today I'll post about a 2 mile hike through an old cranberry bog in the Truro area of the Cape Cod National Seashore.

I've just done a Google search and found this 17-page interpretive guide to the trail:  http://www.nps.gov/caco/planyourvisit/upload/FinalPametrackcards.pdf.  We happened upon it because some of our Alexandria neighbors had taken in a couple of the day hikes and recommended that we look into them.

Our route took us out into the bog area, but we stopped and enjoyed the view from the high dunes in the area.  The post title refers to the incredible quality of light on the cape - I've heard several hypotheses on why it's so beautiful, including one that said it is so clear because the cape is wind swept from being 30+ miles out into the ocean - this is also why it's so susceptible to winter and spring storms.

The interpretive sign at the start of the trail provides a good overview of the activities, and elsewhere, there is an introduction to how the rolling topography came to be.  The cape itself is left over from glacier activity during the last ice age, and now the sand deposits are more or less maintained by the natural current action of the Atlantic.  Where you find depressions, as in the example here, large ice flows were left to melt there.  Now, when they fill with water, it is often fresh from some filtering action that I don't understand yet.

Mary and I wandered along the trail back in the dunes, which had some stretches that were challenging climbs - not very long, as you're never getting to altitudes higher than 150 feet or so - but because of their steepness and because the trail is loose sand.

We emerged onto the beach about a mile or so after we started.  Here's a view from near the foot of one of the dunes, looking south towards the parking area.  There's a wide upper beach here with a trough that fills in at high tide, which was coming in while we walked along it.

There is a steep beach along the eastern edge, where the waves continuously roll in and crash.

A final note about the topography - this area is called the Pamet River, which is because it provides an outlet from the ocean back to the bay for water that gets inland.  It's not like there's the strong flow like you would find in the Shenandoah, or even Hawksbill Creek - it's more of a standing water, slow current watershed.

But a nor'easter in the winter of 2007 was intense, and broke through the dune one this side.  They say the ocean roared inland past Route 6, and for a time, the northern reaches of the outer cape were an island.  A restoration effort to help the dune rebuild itself is underway, shown here in the last photo.