John suggested we drive out on Cape Cod today. It's a beautiful, clear, warm day so off we went. It's about 60 miles from Foxboro to Cape Cod, then 60 miles farther to the far end of Cape Cod in Provincetown. According to Wikipedia, Cape Cod is an arm-shaped peninsula forming the easternmost portion of Massachusetts. The small town character and beaches brings heavy tourism during the summer months. To me Cape Cod is most famous for Hyannis Port, summer home of the Kennedy family.
Route 6 runs through the center of the peninsula and is a parkway. There are roads running the length of the peninsula on either side of Route 6 going through all the small towns. we got off Route 6 and drove east through Hyannis, Yarmouth, Dennis, Harwich and Chatham. I took photos of this full display of beach toys; a wonderful ice cream stand from a former gas station; and this interesting population sign. We saw lighthouses, cute villages and great houses.
Our goal was the north tip of the Cape at Provincetown, supposedly the first place the Pilgrims touched land before going on to Plymouth. We stopped at the National Park Service Visitor's Center at Salt Pond, at the start of the Cape Code National Seashore and watched movies about the geology of Cape Cod, Henry David Thoreau's time on Cape Cod, and the whaling industry. The view from the back porch of the Visitor's Center was lovely and it overlooks a "kettle." Kettles are depressions formed when glaciers began to melt over 18,000 years ago. This kettle is unique because it is salt water. the opposite side was breached which allows salt water to enter and it raises and lowers with the tides.
We left the Visitor's Center and continued north on Route 6. At this point there were no roads paralleling and the traffic came to a dead stop. After 15 minutes, I asked John to turn around and we gave up on getting to Provincetown. We headed off towards Woods Hole on the southwest tip of the Cape, but turned north to Sandwich before we got there since it was getting on towards 2 p.m.
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