Cape Cod

Chatham Train Museum/old depot

Chatham

We used Chatham, MA as our base for our week in Cape Cod.  I had wanted a town around the "elbow" of the Cape since that seemed to me like an area where we would be able to easily explore.  I was right on the ability to get around and got lucky in that I think I picked the best of the small towns in that part of the cape!  Chatham has a cute downtown that is several blocks long so plenty of window shopping and a good collection of eateries.  We stayed in a bed and breakfast for the week - The Queen Anne Inn Chatham, MA.  We had a tasty breakfast each morning and really enjoyed dinner there one night.  One of the joys of staying at a B&B is talking with the other guests, but that got difficult with covid.  However, with a firepit that was usually lit at night we could sit around it and comfortably talk with anyone else who came to enjoy it.

 

a local road sign

main street Chatham

Cape Cod National Seashore

One of the draws for Cape Cod was the Cape Cod National Seashore and the Cape Cod Rail Trail.  Not sure if it was covid or too early in their "season", but the National Park Service visitor center was not open - sigh.  However, we were still able to get a map and for Carol a long sleeve tee shirt - a little too chilly for my short sleeve and forgot my jacket!  We hiked for a little bit and then headed for the car to beat some rain. We hiked around the Nauset Marsh Trail and the Doane trail.  The first part of the hike gave us some pretty vistas and then we saw a large granite rock that was probably about 10 feet above ground and similarly below ground.  Rocks like this and some of the ponds are remnants of the ice age.

 It drizzled off and on, but we were able to drive along the coast some.  We saw lighthouses and seals.  We couldn't take a picture of the seals that looked like anything.  We were told that in one area where we stopped and saw seals that the sea bottom is 8 feet deep right at the end of the beach.

2 of the 3 sisters lighthouses.

Nauset Lighthouse

We learned that there were 3 locations of lighthouses on the cape each with a distinct light.  We noticed that the Nauset lighthouse alternated red and white lights.  We found down the road 3 lighthouses that had been in one location almost like a single lighthouse.  The three were called the 3 sisters.

While we were driving along the beach we also saw where the original transatlantic telegraph cable came across.  There was a hut there.  The area was aptly called Marconi Beach. After that it was still drizzly and we had hit the end of the car road in this area so we headed back.  Guess that means we left some of the seashore for another visit.

Whale watching

Whale watching was high on our list of "to dos", but we were both skeptical of how much whale we would really see.  We had gone on tours in other places and had been lucky to see a whale from a distance.  Our fears were unfounded.  We saw three different whales - yes 3 not 3 times of the same whale.  Our first whale hung around for about a half hour or so.  He would come up for a minute or two and then lazily go back under for a few minutes and then pop up on the other side of the boat.  We then moved to another area and found 2 separate whales.  I called the first whale a "he" because there was a naturalist on our boat who could identify the whales for us.  The first one was a juvenile who only has a number not a name yet.  One of the 2 whales we saw the second time is a 37 year old female who has had 7 calves.  The tails of the whales are all unique which is how they are identified.

Cape Cod Rail Trail

We went bike riding twice.  The first time we started right down the road from our inn which was great in our minds.  We were on a spur of the trail and when we got to the intersection with the main trail we ran into a truly Massachusetts solution - a roundabout!  It is pictured below.  The path had a lot of woody areas - we pretty much rode to one end of the trail.  On our way back - right before the roundabout, I saw a sign for a winery.  We decided it was time for a stop.  We did a couple of wine tastings and liked it so much we bought 2 bottles- the most we could fit on the bikes!  One was an early Father's Day present for Jeff.  We even drove back another day and visited First Crush the winery again for a glass of chardonnay each.

Our second bike ride required a short drive to Harwich a neighboring town.  The bike ride started out great.  We saw some ponds with beaches early on and knew there were places to stop and eat and drink along the way.  The weather forecast was for a sunny day.  The weatherman was wrong.  We hit a good stopping/turn around spot and started to think about where we wanted to stop for something to eat.  While we considering one spot, we noticed it was looking like rain and there was no place to get out from the rain if it did come.  We kept biking.  We weren't fast enough.  It started to drizzle - well okay we can live with that.  Then it POURED , lightened up only to pour again.  We were soaked.  We saw a small business with a porch harboring several other bikers - we joined them and waited.  It stopped after a little bit and we rode back to our car.  We were soaked and cold.  We stopped at an A and W afterwards and ate in our warm car - not sure if we were that hungry or what but the chicken fingers and root beer were great!

Bike trail roundabout

First Crush winery - great cookies and wine

Chatham Bars Inn

This is a well known resort in Chatham.  We had met a second cousin of Jeff and his wife who had suggested we visit it.  They were right.  Nice view and nice food in a nice building.

idea for a future planter at our condo?

Miscellaneous

We visited Provincetown as part of our whale watching trip.  It is the very end of the cape and is known for good art and good food.  It was a Friday evening when we were exploring the town which was good since it meant the galleries were open later than usual.  We were able to talk with several gallery owners and saw several very nice pieces.  There was also a store that sold tiles with artist approved copies of their artwork where Jeff found one as a souvenir.  By chance, the day we took the whale watching trip was the day the lobster diver was eaten by a whale.  When a gallery owner first told me the story, I thought he was pulling the tourist's tail.  Only to have him assure me he had heard the story a couple of times that day and it appeared real.  

Another day we went to Falmouth where the second cousin of Jeff's lives.  Jeff  had become friends with him on Facebook but they had never met in person.  We decided since we were going to be in the area he should reach out.  We met up with him, his wife and their dogs at their house and then went to their yacht club for dinner.  It was a very nice evening and now Jeff knows more of his relatives!  Also we now have plan to meet another cousin in Maine. 

lavender farm

I used to grow lavender in my perennial garden and enjoy its smell.  So of course we had to visit a farm when we heard about one in the area.  The plants were just starting to bloom.  The lavender farm was on our way out of the Cape.  We went to Plymouth and then our next destination of Boston.  

Plymouth Rock

Mayflower replica

The end of our time in Cape Cod.

New York and Rhode Island

New York

 

After leaving Baltimore, we headed for a friend's house in Long Island.  It was the first time we drove to their house.  He teased us about how horrible the drive would be when he gave us advice on how to get to their place.  We feared fast moving traffic with cars weaving instead we found very bumpy roads and slow moving traffic - just above idling.  The traffic was so slow google maps had to add well over an hour to our time! Happily we got there sane and in one piece and started a nice visit with friends.   

We are incrementally seeing the New York city area.  This time our friends took us out on Long Island to some wineries and then we went into the city some too.  We visited Duck Walk Vineyards and Sparkling Pointe.  It was a pretty day so we were happy to sit outside, taste some wine and eat some cheese and crackers.  At Duck Walk, you had several wines to choose from to make up your 4 sample taste.  Three of us tasted the wines - they were nice and in fact our friends bought a bottle.  We sat outside listening to a very good guitar player.  As the name suggests, our second winery had sparkling wines.  Their tastings were a little more regimented with preset choices for you.  Jeff and I made a point of choosing different flights.  Being the sucker that I am for sparkling, we took a bottle home.  Then it was time to go back home.  The area is very remote, but also kind of geared to visits from the suburban and city folks with lots of farm stores, you pick em places, little bakeries - all sorts of great food and drink. 

The Vessel from inside

The next day it was city time.  It also was a very hot day.  We took the train into the city with the plan of visiting the Vessel and Hi Line park with lunch mixed in.  First stop was the Vessel.  When it first opened, I had read about it and thought it would be fun to visit, unfortunately I had forgotten about it.  Fortunately our friend had not.  We got tickets for it and then started climbing and looking out from all the various vantage spots.  Like I said it was a hot day, so we quickly became enamored with the Hudson River side because it had a breeze!  When we had our fill of the Vessel we headed off to lunch only to get wooed into a totally different restaurant - The Tailor's Pub.  We had a mixture of healthy and pub food all of which was pretty good.  While there, I realized how close we were to Mood Fabric store and made a pitch for stopping there.  Since it was so hot out, the guys were agreeable.  I found some buttons I needed to finish a project and some fabric to make a couple of other things (getting back to my sewing machine may be required for the new projects though).

Rhode Island

The next day we were off for Providence, Rhode Island which was our next planned home base.  We stayed at an Omni hotel at the convention center which is being renovated.  Our room had already received a refresh and looked good - best looking/cleanest carpet ever!  After relaxing and unpacking, we headed out for a walk around the area.  Were on the edge of an arts district and not far from both Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design.  As we started walking we found an art deco street clock and several nice murals.  Like most art areas, you could tell the district had suffered during covid, but happily there were signs of life returning too.

School of Economics at Brown

When we stopped at the front desk to ask about walking to Brown, they had said it was atop a big hill and you should drive there.  To us, that was challenge on - we walked to it and around the area which had some very nice houses.  Being urban and older, the houses tended to have well tended gardens with big old trees, some nice rhododendrons and lots of flowers from spring to early summer blooming plants.

Newport

We went to Newport for the day.  We had heard about the "cottages" from the super rich of the early 20th century and the cliff walk plus knew it as a good sailing spot.  We parked in town and started walking -we walked alot that day.  Of course, it was unseasonably hot.  I kept wondering about the rich ladies in their long dresses in the day and how they survived, but then when we got to the cliffs and where their houses were it was much cooler.  The most famous house is the the "breakers" which was owned by a Vanderbilt and so named because the water breaks (waves) right outside their land. It is an impressive place with ornamentation everywhere.  Hard to imagine this being the norm for a child, but it was.

Breakers from Cliff Walk

Entry Hall of Breakers

a bedroom

part of the kitchen

After the Breakers we visited the Marble House which was owned by a different Vanderbilt.  This one had a strong willed wife who divorced him shortly after building the house and went on to be a leader in the suffragist movement.  She even had china made which is displayed in a cabinet.

Marble House

The marble house is so named because it is heavily made of marble.  It also has a couple of unique rooms like the one above known as the gothic room.  It includes some very unique and special artwork from that time and scholars used to make reservations to come and study the works.

The lady of the house had tried to make the interior of Marble House very European so she decided she needed something Asian also thus she had this pavilion built in her backyard close to the cliffs.  True to the gilded age lifestyle, she opened it with a huge ball. 

kitchen of the Marble House

As we walked back to town after viewing those 2 house, we saw many other quite nice homes.  There are signs along the sidewalk describing how many of them fell from favor and were almost razed.  Several of them now make up much of the campus of the Catholic University Salve Regina.

another view from the cliff walk

New Bedford

On our way to Cape Cod, we stopped in New Bedford, Massachusetts.  Jeff had read about a whaling museum there and wanted to stop.  It is a well known museum since others later suggested we visit it. It is part of the National Park Service.   At one time, New Bedford was a major whaling seaport.  They say the top place, but I noticed some other towns around Cape Cod claiming the same thing!

view of New Bedford marina

whale skeleton in the entry of the whaling museum

example of a whale heart

After that we were back on the road on our way to Cape Cod.

Williamsburg, VA

Williamsburg, VA area

My main memory of this trip will be the weather - who would have thought it would only be in the 60s in VA over Memorial Day Weekend!  It was in the mid to upper 80s when we first got there but a storm Friday evening and another mid day Saturday brought a fair amount of rain and a cold wind!  Sunday's high was only in the 60s.  On Saturday the three of us (Cierra joined us for the week end) went to the farmer's market and got strawberries and then went to the old town colonial area.  

The visit to Old Towne Williamsburg did not start great.  2 very slow employees to change our vouchers to tickets and the change in weather - we went from being hot to being cold in a half hour.  We did enjoy the town though.  There were several shops to stop and visit with knowledgeable staff representing shop owners of the time.  

We walked through a small vegetable garden and learned about how hard it was to get water in a drought and where on the plant a peanut grows.  Later we would hide out from the cold and rain and learn about cooking during the 1700s and how they only cooked one meal a day since they needed light to do some aspects of cooking such as deboning a meat or waiting for your oven to get hot and then to stabilize at the correct temperature to make bread.  The attendants were great at comparing what was happening in the 18th century to food trends that are happening now.

We also noticed a sign at the farmers market area for Old Towne Williamsburg about how it was illegal to sell your products before the official start of the market or to buy more than your household needed.  We were suspicious at least some of those rules were related to taxes especially after we learned that there had been taxes imposed on goods transported between individual colonies.  England had done a lot of things to keep the colonists as supporting players to mother England such as restricting the type of sheep allowed to be raised in the colonies so the colonist couldn’t compete with English textiles.  The above picture was taken in the blacksmith shop.  

We also visited the city and county courthouse (colonial capitol - council side was the courtroom).  It was interesting to hear details of court options and proceedings because it did dispel some beliefs I had of the time.  There was a story of a woman who had a farm and hired a man to deliver the goods to market only to ruin them on the way.  They did not agree on what percentage of the crop was damaged and the lady was able to take the man to court and win her case.  I had thought a woman could not do such a thing, but since she was widowed she could.

As we were leaving, we passed a field full of sheep baaing a lot.  In fact, some were going hoarse another person watching them said they had just been weaned from their mothers and were upset.

In addition to the Old Town area, we wandered around the campus of William and Mary.  Cierra is now a proud owner of a pair of William and Mary sweatpants since she had not brought any pants for the trip and her legs were cold!

  

The First day we were all there was Friday and it was warm - what we had expected for the whole week end.  Cierra had been advised to visit a winery or two while there so we went to  The Williamsburg Winery where we did a tasting on a nice covered porch.  We each had a different flight and shared ones we liked or thought someone else would.  It was a nice beginning to our trip. 

     

Our travels also took us to Yorktown which is only 18 miles away.  There we toured the battlefield.  Thanks to Covid an excellent app was developed that tells you what happened at various sites along the driving route.

We also visited Jamestown.  There is a parkway that connects the 3 towns.  I am sure back then it was considered a long ride to go from one to the other, but now a days they are each a short drive from each other.  I was surprised to learn that Pocahontas had been part of Jamestown; not sure where I thought she fit into US history!  There is the remnants of the fort that was built and the church is still standing.

One thing that surprised us as we drove around the sites was that often in the woods there was greenery.  It was not just dead leaves on the ground like we think of forests in say Missouri or Illinois.

Since the whole family was together, we planned a nice meal which turned out to be a 3 course brunch at a French restaurant called Le Yaca on Sunday.  If you ever visit Williamsburg, I would highly recommend it.

Washington DC

Jeff and I then slipped into DC for a couple of days to visit museums and the zoo.  We got to the zoo, but did not get to see the pandas.  That was disappointing, but the zoo was not up to its standards in general with many exhibits closed and animals offsite.  We did make it to one of the portrait galleries which was quite nice.  Above is an Andean bear

On our last morning we walked from our hotel in Chinatown to the National Mall only to find it rather empty.  It was us, a high school group, some protestors and just a handful of other tourists at 10 in the morning.

Baltimore, MD

Then it was onto Baltimore for a couple of days where we visited Fort McHenry.   The defiant commander of Fort McHenry commissioned a very large U.S. flag, known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" to insure the British could see it.  Francis Scott Key was inspired by the large flag flying triumphantly above the fort during the bombardment and wrote a poem that was later set to a British tune.  It was recognized by Congress in 1931 as our National Anthem.  

The Brood X of 17 year Cicadas were in good voice and everywhere during our visit.  They would land on you and if you didn't notice, you might take them inside.  Most creatures and a few people feast on the Cicadas.  I believe the snake below may have dined on them given how he wasn't moving much when we encountered him.