It's almost family reunion time again for us. We travel as much as we can afford, or more, but the Cape always calls us home.
Year after year, very little changes in Wellfleet, Massachusetts except the steady erosion from the sea which will eventually eliminate the whole thing. As a glacial moraine, it was never meant to last forever.
One of my life goals is to make sure my kids, and my kid's kids, absorb the salt air, piney fragrance, and cool salt water into their souls as I have done all of my life. A precious inheritance for them.
While we were out there last week, The NYT published this: The Calming Quiet of Outer Cape Cod - A flock of artistic and literary types are finding summer refuge in Wellfleet and Truro.
That is bad: there goes the neighborhood? Or time to buy before you can't because rich jerks may arrive. At present, it's a sort-of secret, unfashionable Subaru-type place. Bernie bumper stickers, and locals with beater pickups with NRA stickers and Grateful Dead stickers. A share of very quiet old Boston families, profs, writers, artists, architects, NY shrinks - and lots of regular people like us. You know what I mean.
Lots of random pics of just some of the things we love. Not mentioning all of the seafood, on which we feed constantly out there,
For example, water lilies in bloom on a Wellfleet/Truro "pond." Pic from my kayak.
Lotsa pics below the fold, with some useful info mixed in...
We checked out almost every pond around the Wellfleet-Truro border by kayak or on foot. That's a good-sized hike on sand roads. Herring Pond, Slough Pond, Horseleech Pond, Round Pond, William's Pond, Higgin's Pond -most people would term them lakes.
Lotus in late bloom
Tip for beginning kayakers: Use a flotation vest designed for kayaking. The straps leave arms and shoulders free movement. PFDs: How to Choose for kayaking.
A dock on Round Pond
Hidden roads inside the National Seashore lands. Good hiking. Bring iPhone with Map app. No road markers. A maze. Hidden in those woods, Marcel Breuer's summer place, also Serge Chermayeff's.
An old farmhouse, now in the woods
Sunrise, Gull Pond
Around Wellfleet Harbor
Pre-dawn across Blackfish Creek
I like the one in the middle
Antique bumper sticker: Veterans for McCain
Necessary after-dinner stop for ice cream - the old Harbor Freeze, now Mac's, on the town pier
Sea Clam dragger unloading the day's haul to a truck
Smallest dragger I've ever seen
Beaching it - Power's Landing on the harbor. My old trusty Osprey day pack
Dusty Miller on dunes at Duck Harbor beach, on Cape Cod Bay
Atlantic Ocean beaches, water a balmy 62-63 degrees. Works for me. When the Grey Seals are around, keep an eye out for sharks. Those 600-lb. seals seem to think people are an odd sort of seal, and are curious in a friendly way. The entire Bird Dog family is passionate body-surfers and/or boogie-boarders. More fun than even skiing, I think.
Waiting for a good wave
Crowded at Newcomb Hollow
Sunrise at The Beachcomber
Sunrise, Cahoon's Hollow. Portugal in the distance.
We did a 4-hour kayak trip through Nauset Marsh in Eastham. I have always wanted to get inside that vast marsh on the ocean side, bounded by the barrier of Nauset Beach. On an incoming tide, you fight the currents. On an outgoing tide, you fight the currents going back to the landing.
You paddle all the way out to Nauset Beach and take a cooling swim in the ocean inlet with the friendly seals all around.
In Wellfleet, who is the first customer at Cumbie's every morning at 5 am? Your editor, of course. The professional fishermen arrive late, about 5 minutes later, in their rubber boots, torn flannel shirts, and cranky hung-over attitudes. Semi-bad coffee, the universal requirement of the American male.
