It’s soooo easy to stay at Tony and Joyces’\u00a0 forever, because it is so comfortable and they are so welcoming, but I finally tore myself away to visit that most iconic of Massachusetts destinations, Cape Cod<\/strong>.\u00a0 It was a really pretty day, made moreso since a pretty big storm is forecast for tomorrow.<\/p>\n

I took the side roads out of Fall River, which was dumb.\u00a0 I blew two hours sitting at stop lights, wondering why Massachusetts can’t mark a road like other states, when I coulda been on the Cape (sitting at stop signs in little Cape towns as it turns out).\u00a0 The state forest that was supposed to be open<\/strong> for winter camping was not, but the very deluxe Nickerson State Park<\/strong> which was supposed to be closed<\/strong> was in fact open, so woo hoo.<\/p>\n

I ate clam strips in Sandwich, and drove all the way to the tip of Provincetown<\/strong>, where I splashed around in the Atlantic a little bit.\u00a0 As I walked towards the ocean there appeared to be some kind of wild sea critter just sleeping on the sand, and it seemed like I was the only one who saw it – very odd.\u00a0\u00a0 I walked straight into a string I had not noticed because I was staring at the critter.\u00a0 The string was in fact a perimeter around the critter, which was a cute little dozing harp seal<\/strong>, and there was an explanatory sign.\u00a0 It turns out that young seals will crawl up on the sand and hang out for days at a time, so that the Park Service actually staked out a perimeter around this guy complete with a notice that it is $10,000 fine to harass the little guy!\u00a0 Pretty funny.\u00a0 He would lift his head up and stare at us staring at him, then nod off again.<\/p>\n

Nickerson SP is pretty cool.\u00a0 250 or so campsites spread out around some of the little ponds (kettles(*)<\/em>) that dot the Cape landscape.\u00a0 There are bike paths all over.\u00a0 Even though it was basically dark by the time I picked out a site I opened up the bike and zoomed around for a while on the almost-invisible paths.\u00a0 I sure like having the bike.<\/p>\n

(*)I used to know this, but Cape Cod is a giant terminal moraine (i.e. pile of rocks) left over from the ice ages.\u00a0 Quarter-mile thick chunks of ice were left behind, and when they melted they left these kettles, which are now either (cranberry) bogs or neat little freshwater ponds.<\/p>\n

I get faster 3G here at the Nickerson CG than I did at Tony’s house.<\/p>\n

Today I went back to the Cape Cod National Seashore<\/strong> for a couple of likely sounding hikes.\u00a0 The Fort Hill<\/strong> and Red Cedar Swamp<\/strong> hike was just grand.\u00a0 Great sea views and bog views and everything in between.\u00a0\u00a0 The White Maple Swamp<\/strong> hike was very nice also, but I messed it up, I went off on a little spur and headed off the wrong way when I got back, thus missing half of the hike with the actual swamp.\u00a0 Serves me right for getting baked.<\/p>\n

This impending storm caused me to call Tony and ask if I could take them up on their generous offer to “come back anytime”… anytime in this case being one day later.<\/p>\n

It worked out real nice, they hadn’t changed my sheets, so I arrived, yakked with Joyce and cleaned out some of their leftovers, slid back under my familiar covers, charged my devices, and got the heck out of there in the late morning!<\/p>\n

Friday<\/h3>\n

Time to visit another classmate Dave.\u00a0 Freeway to escape Fall River, but once I got over near the ocean I took 3A rather than 3 to see the countryside.\u00a0 So I went right down the middle of downtown Plymouth, where I stopped and enjoyed the harbor and had a pretty fine baked bluefish lunch at the place (Wood’s Seafood) that Yelp said was the best low-budg place in the area.<\/p>\n

Rolled into Dave’s 6-ish.\u00a0 They had a pre-existing condition of a dinner date; but that actually worked out well for me, I got full control of the channel changer and got to use their excellent wifi for a couple of hours.\u00a0 If only the Giants game (game 1, G’s-Philly’s, Lincecuem vs Halladay) was tonight instead of tomorrow.\u00a0 I am perfectly set up for it here, but will be totally off the grid tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s soooo easy to stay at Tony and Joyces’\u00a0 forever, because it is so comfortable and they are so welcoming, but I finally tore myself away to visit that most iconic of Massachusetts destinations, Cape Cod.\u00a0 It was a really … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2010-east-coast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}