Cape Cod Heights

Today, I'll wrap up a final post about our recent visit to Cape Cod.  On our last day there, we took another drive up to the National Seashore, where we explored one of the nature trails out into a salt marsh.  Afterwards, we drove up to the Nauset Light and then took a walk around the Marconi area - these dune photos are from that part of the adventure.

We also went back into the cypress swamp there - we'd been out into the swamp last September and thought it would be interesting to have another look.  The place was absolutely swarming with mosquitos though - it wasn't any kind of pleasant nature walk!  I hardly remember it, in fact!

Now, that's a marked contrast to the little walk we took around the salt marsh at the visitor center earlier that day.  The two photos with water views come from that part of the day's activities.  This area had a couple of interesting features - after walking through the marsh you gradually climb into a recovering forest, but all around a remnants of earlier development, including a golf course, and an old dike that was used to capture and filture the salt water.

There is some kind of natural effect here that works to make just about any water found inland on the cape fresh.  That's research for another day.

As we walked around those dunes, I found myself remembering some times when I was very young, and we lived in Florida, which was still developing at the time - before Disney World.  In fact, the Space Age was still just getting started...probably the Gemini program era.  Mid '60's.

We lived in a little town near Orlando and would drive to Daytona Beach or New Smyrna Beach on the weekends.  Development on the dunes there was still pretty sparse back there, and scenes like the ones above could still be found, except the Florida sand is always sparkling white in my recollection.  I remember an adventure around the top of a dune where we found a gentle sloping path back down the beach, and my buddy and I slid down it on our rear ends. 

You'd be lucky to find a patch like that anywhere on the Florida beaches today.  Thank goodness for the foresight it took to set aside and preserve the Cape Cod National Seashore! 

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.

Cape Cod Right (*)

* - Technically, we did not see a right whale on this cruise.

For a second adventure during our Cape Cod vacation, I looked into a whale watch cruise.  They are offered out of several harbors on the cape, including Falmouth, Hyannis, and Provincetown.  Although there was a bit of a drive up to Provincetown, Mary and I decided to take our cruise from there on the Dolphin Fleet.  They have a fairly comprehensive website at http://www.whalewatch.com/dolphinfleet/.

After you get on board, the naturalist that accompanies each of the Dophin Fleet cruises begins an orientation tour with safety rules, followed with a list and description of the types of wildlife that could potentially be encountered.  Here are photos of Mary and me just after boarding (taken by a vacationing Brit, we returned the favor for him and his wife, and then saw them strolling around Chatham the next day) and a photo of one of the boats as we left the harbor.

The types of whales that you might see during these cruises include the baleen species right whales, humpback, and finback; also pilot whales and dolphins.  There is a finback photo at the top of this post; we encountered two of them just offshore before we were even clear of the P-town peninsula.  I took the lighthouse photo just after we saw them.

For unusual fish speicies, there is the mola mola or sunfish, and the basking shark, and we saw two each of them, but I did not get photos of them since they were on the other side of the boat. 

Watching the finbacks was quite fascinating - they are the second largest animals on the planet, after blue whales.  They typically have a streamlined, slender build, reaching up to 90 feet in length, and weighing as much at 150,000 pounds.  I took a little time to comprehend this concept, because the whale feeds on plankton - small - microscopic - plants.  Also they can live to be nearly one hundred years old.

After the encounter with the finbacks, we cruised north into protected waters for about a half hour and searched for other animals.  That's where we saw the mola molas, or sunfishes, and the basking sharks. 

Eventually we ended up amongst a large group of dolphins.  There were dozens of them visible on the surface, including this small pod that was at the front of the boat for a while. The estimated count of dolphins in the area was 150.  They did some of the typical performances you might expect from them - high leaps as singles, and some as pairs; then the pilot steered the boat around to make a steep wake and a few of them jetted into the high wave and then exploded out of the surf into the air.  It's easy to see why they hold such a vivid place in the imagination, since they are so gregarious.

So, yeah, this was a very touristy thing to do...but it's not something we would set out to do every time we go up to the cape.  It was a very worthwhile thing to do once...although, if we are ever up during humpback season, it might be worth a second go to encounter them. 

Cape Cod Flight

For an adventure during the recent vacation at Cape Cod, I looked into taking a short aerial tour.  We booked an hour long trip out of the Chatham general aviation airport - here are some of the highlights of what we saw.

The first and second images are on the bay side of the cape.  There is a series of sand bars in the first, and the little black dots are an oyster farm.  The second is a salt marsh - we visited another of these in the National Seashore area later in the week.

Third:  a picture of Mary and me in front of the little plane before takeoff.  Our flight was level at an altitude of 1,250 feet or so, and we flew at 110 mph.  If you think of the outer cape as being in the shape of Rosie the Riveters bare arm, we flew from the elbow (Chatham) to the fist (Provencetown).  Then we added a little tour over Monomoy island, with a seal colony numbering in the thousands.  And somewhere on the horizon there, in the fourth picture, would be Nantucket Island in Connecticut. 

For the fifth photo, here is the inlet at Wellfleet and the harbor.  Then a shot of the Chatham Bars area, with the wonderfull green water.

The final picture, appropriately, is a shot of our approach on final.  In some of the pictures, you can see the fixed landing gear of the little plane, but in this one, you can see the prop blade as the camera lens appeared to slow it down.  I think you will see the blade in some of the other photos as well.

Here's a link to the tour operator's page:  http://www.chathamairport.com/aerial_tours.php

We took the Captain Douglas special - be sure to check for current pricing before you book!



"All Things Cape Cod League"

As our vacation week progressed, I became aware that the Cape Cod Baseball League would have its season opener on Friday, and that the Chatham Anglers, the local team where we were staying, would have their home opener on Saturday night. So after a great visit with my friend John and his daughter Tildy (John and I were stationed in Berlin together, and Tildy is a rising sophomore at Wellesley), Mary and I ventured out into a rainy and cold spring evening on the Cape for the game.

Another friend from Berlin, Brian, is a Cape League enthusiast. Last year, I caught up with him in San Francisco, where he wore a Wareham Gatemen baseball cap around town. By coincidence, that’s who the Chatham team played for the opener. I have a couple of photos of the game here – the teams during the National Anthem, and another with the Anglers up to bat.

This league has a long history, and since the Cape has long been a summer destination, league play has been romanticized into the popular culture there. I’ll admit I was a bit caught up in it, despite the jacket I had to wear to the game, and the fact that other fans in the stands with us were in parkas and gloves. It did make me think of our own Valley Baseball League and the Luray Wranglers, as well.

It turns out that the Cape Cod and Valley leagues share a few characteristics. Both are part of the National Alliance of Summer Baseball, which features collegiate players with NCAA authorization, and some sponsorship from the major leagues. Both are “wood bat leagues.” And both are represented by many current and past pro players, including hall of famers.

In keeping with the summer getaway theme, according to Wikipedia, the Cape Cod league has been the subject of a couple of movies over the last 20 years or so, and there are a couple of books on the topic.  All great...but then, the Valley  league has one of the best blogs going for it: All Things Valley League (link:  http://allthingsvalleyleague.typepad.com/)!


We had a nice time, and the little stadium in Chatham is a charm. But the weather was a bit much and we headed home after three innings, with the Gatemen up 4-0 already.

I’m looking forward to catching my first Wranglers game soon, though - no parkas and gloves, and afterwards, a nice cookout with some Page County sweet corn!

Just Back

Mary and I are just back from vacation in Cape Cod, so I have a few items to post after a week away.  We once again stayed at the little house in Chatham, she tacked the vacation week onto the end of her college reunion.  It made for a great week.

I've written about the town and this house before - we stayed there last September as well, but this was the first time in a very long time we took a full week off on an official vacation.  I think this fact had a lot to do with the old pups Gracie and Sofie, who we preferred not to leave with a sitter or to kennel in their old age, once they got past 12 or so.  In thinking about it this morning, we last took a week off together to head down to the Outer Banks in August 2007 - but there were a lot of things about that trip that probably led to us not doing a real getaway again until just now.

But enough of that rambling.  We went to the wonderful little town of Chatham, and we strung together some adventures and sightseeing, mixed in with visits to old friends and relatives.  So that'll be the ntaure of some of the posts.  First, however, I wanted to write about backyard nature - drawing some inspiration from Richard Louv's "The Nature Principle" - a book I wrote about a couple of weeks ago and read while we were away.

My observations focus on the little shed shown here, which actually belonged to the house next door.  It was literally close enough for me to reach out and touch it from the deck where I drank my coffee every morning (and spent the afternoons reading in the sun), so I had ample time to watch the goings on.

This was taken to show the carpenter bee damage.

The first morning activities were the robins and jays who were out and about at first light.  They quickly grew accustomed to me and soon were ignoring me - until later in the week.  After sunlight began to strike the side of the shed, a big old male carpenter bee, would show up and hover near the shed, his loud buzzing interrupted only by the appearance of female bees, birds, or other potential mates that invaded his space.  (BTW, I noticed a lot of traffic on the blog from searches on carpenter bees and their damage - those page views are referred to old posts I had...this photo of bee damage provides another update).

Late in the morning, and also in the cool of the evening, a couple of young bunnies would hop out from under the shed.  These guys were only 6 inches long or so, clearly only a couple of months old, but already weened and fending for themselves.  They'd hop out into the little side yard there and graze.  In the evening, as things cooled off, they'd play together or by themselves - I saw the smaller one do a series of half turns in place, and vertical leaps over there between blades of grass.

This reminded me of a passage in the Louv book, which I will summarize here - essentially, this is the introduction to the book.  Louv writes:

• The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need to achieve natural balance.
• The mind/body/nature connection, also called vitamin N (for nature), will enhance physical and mental health.
• Utilizing both technology and nature experience will increase our intelligence, creative thinking, and productivity, giving birth to the hybrid mind.
• Human/nature social capital will enrich and redefine community to include all living things.
• In the new purposeful place, natural history will be as important as human history to regional and personal identity.
• Through biophilic design, our homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, and town will not only conserve watts, but also produce human energy.
• In relationship with nature, the high-performance human will conserve and create natural habitat - and economic potential - where we live, learn, work, and play.

In a sense, sitting there watching the birds, bees, and bunnies, I had a sort of vacation laboratory to think about some of these concepts.  This comtemplative time brought home the importance of some of the connections I am fortunate to have out in Page County near the Hawksbill Cabin.  And as much as anything else, that time gave me a sense of urgency for completing the 75@75 project, which I will do this year.

But back to Cape Cod - an altogether different environment for our vacation, with both natural features to enjoy and not too distant from a small town and urban setting, which was also an import for the getaway.  More to follow for the balance of the week.

Here is an Amazon link to Louv's book:

The Cape Cod Lights

"A man may stand there and put all America behind him." Henry David Thoreau

On Sunday, we took a driving tour on the Cape, heading north from Chatham – ironically, taking this direction meant we were going “down the Cape.” A highlight of the afternoon was visits to two of three lighthouses we checked out during our trip; after seeing the Chatham Light on Saturday during a walk on the beach, we checked out the Nauset and Highland Lights further north on the Cape.


There are several others here, including one at Race Point at the far north tip of the Cape near Provincetown – we saw it from a distance but it is on accessible by walking, and some further west towards the mainland, or “up the Cape.” We may check them out on some future trip. The history of these lights is very interesting, and they’ve been an important part of New England navigation since the early 1800’s.

The first, Chatham Light, is still operating as a Coast Guard facility and is not open to the public, but it is close to a parking area and is one of a number of things that you can check out there at the Cape Cod National Seashore. This area was once guarded by two lights, which differentiated it from the Highland Light to the North…apparently they were mobile on skids so they could be aligned with the shifting openings of the barrier islands that guard the harbor.

The second light was decommissioned eventually, and moved to Nauset. We visited and actually climbed this light during Sunday’s outing – it’s the one in the photo that opens this post.

Besides the fact that it was originally in Chatham, this light has several points of interest associated with it: it is used as the logo for Cape Cod potato chips…I just learned that today from a scan of Wikipedia. For history, there were three lights here originally, again, to differentiate the location from Highland and Chatham, but you could see where this might get out of hand. So they decommissioned those “Three Sisters,” which were wooden towers, and moved one of the two Chatham Lights here instead.

The Three Sisters were moved to a little park nearby. It’s an easy walk from there to the current light – and you can park at the Three Sisters location for free, without having to pay an entry fee at the National Seashore area.

There is plenty of additional historical interest in this light – after it was decommissioned, it went into private hands along with the keeper’s house. The Wikipedia article on the light talks about how it was returned to the National Park Service and how it is open today, managed by a historical association.

The final light we visited was the Highland Light, in Truro. This light is still operated by the Coast Guard, although the facility is open to tours. It is also in the middle of the National Seashore area, so there are NPS facilities all around it, including a golf course that I would like to try at some point. Highland Light was authorized by George Washington himself and became the first light on the Massachusetts coast.

This light was the subject of an Edward Hopper painting, which was a point of interest for us, since Mary’s cousin Larry also frequently paints here at this part of the Cape. There’s a link to an image of the Hopper painting here: http://www.culture-making.com/post/highland_light_north_truro_massachusetts_by_edward_hopper

On a final note, the Nauset Light and the Highland Light are both in relocated locations. The eastern shore of the Cape is subject to the same coastal forces that affect Long Island, the New Jersey shore, the Outer Banks, and even Daytona Beach – a southward flow of the water constantly erodes the beaches and barrier islands. So these two lights have both been moved back from the cliffs along the shore to save them - in the photo to the left, the original location of the Highland Light is visible near the observation deck at the end of the path. One of the companies involved in both light moves was contracted for the big move of the Cape Hatteras light following its success with these two.

Wikipedia links to articles about the lights follow, along with another link to the NPS page about the National Seashore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_Light

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauset_Light

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Cod_Highland_Light

http://www.nps.gov/caco/index.htm  

Cape Cod - Catching Up with Friends

One of the treats of traveling these days is that you can be really lucky and run into an old friend somewhere you’re off visiting – while we were on Cape Cod, we took the drive over to Hyannis to meet up with John and Lauren. My friendship with John dates back to Air Force language school in Monterey; they’ve settled in Falmouth, at the southwest corner of the Cape.


We met up late afternoon, so we were able to take in some sights from the Hyannis area before going to dinner. Starting with a cup of coffee in a nice bistro, we drove into town, where we took in some Kennedy memorabilia – this is where the famous compound and retreat is located, which we drove by while keeping a respectable distance.

Most of Hyannis reminds me of beach towns everywhere although there is something just a little different about it that I can’t quite put my finger on yet. We did steer clear of the areas closest to the highways, visiting Main Street, where among the highlights is the Cape Cod Baseball League’s Hall of Fame, which shares a building with the John F. Kennedy museum. Both of these were closed – they seem like they’d be worth a future visit.

We took a drive to the shore, where we strolled around a memorial park dedicated to President Kennedy. Lauren told us that the marina we could see from the park was the one Ted Kennedy often sailed from – that’s a quintessential Kennedy image for me, seeing the old main going out on his boat – so I enjoyed getting a look at this part of the country.

To cap off the sightseeing, we went to a little Hyannis joint called the Paddock. It’s a Cape Cod classic according to the web page (mind the volume if you click this - http://www.paddockcapecod.com/) .

We all enjoyed the “local special” which was a prix fixe style entrée, salad and dessert combination. I could rave on about my salmon, and Mary enjoyed the scallops…and everyone had the chowdah.

A blog note to say thanks to John and Lauren for showing us around – it was a great time. And it gives me pause to consider how lucky I was to serve with such a great bunch of people in the Air Force…the friendships seem to just get richer and richer as time passes on.

Cape Cod Weekend

Mary and I are just back from a weekend on Cape Cod, where we stayed at a charming little house in the town Chatham.  I'll have a few posts on our activities there - we visited with some old friends, took some walks on the beaches that make up the Cape Cod National Seashore, toured several of the lighthouses, and of course, ate seafood for nearly every meal.

Walking on the beaches, we found a variety of shells that we typically don't find in North Carolina or Florida, or even New Jersey, the beaches we most often visit.  Mostly, I'm referring to these scallop shells, arrayed at the bottom of the photo here. 


Of course, the opportunity to have seafood for every meal didn't escape us (although we passed on the calamari breakfast) - one of the nice finds was this little place in Chatham, called the Squire.  I really like the motto, thinking that we all should have one after reading this, although this one is taken.

Sam Adams O-fest on tap - I found it in most of our little stops.