I have gotten behind in my posts!  In my last post I described our day in Boston before heading out to Cape Cod, and now I am finally adding the post about the Cape portion of our trip.  We took a car from Boston and stayed in a hotel in Harwich, which is in the “elbow” of the Cape, looking out over Pleasant Bay.

It was fall, so not warm enough to go in the water, but still a pretty spot to be in.

The sunsets at night were gorgeous.

 

One day we went on a dune tour out of Provincetown.  The tours run from April to November and take you through a part of the Cape Cod National Seashore Park that is closed to the public.  We rode through the dunes in Suburbans while our guide described the history of the area and pointed out the “dune shacks” where famous artists and writers have spent time.

(Anyone else getting the Pina Colada song in their head?  “…in the dunes of the Cape, I’m the love that you’ve looked for, write to me and escape…” )

After driving through the dunes we rode along the beach and stopped for a glass of wine.  We put our feet in the sand while seals swam by – we even saw a shark go past.  I wasn’t quick enough to catch it on camera.

 

We had dinner at the Captain Linnell House, which is a restored mansion that a ship captain built for his wife in 1840.  It is a charming setting.

 

 

Another day we went on a whale watching outing, again out of Provincetown.  We thought it would be a nice afternoon out on the water even if we didn’t see many whales – but were blown away by the number of humpback whales we saw, and how close they were to the boat.

We have been on some whale watch trips in other parts of the country (Hawaii, Alaska) where you wait and wait for a whale to surface, and have to look quickly to spot them in the distance or you miss them.  On this trip the whales floated along the surface of the water while feeding, and you got amazing views of their full length, even the baleen in their mouths.  It was spectacular.

I know the comments by the people around us are a little distracting in this video, but I left them in so you could hear the sounds of the whales:

The return trip to harbor was pretty too.

 

Provincetown itself is fun to walk around.  There are shops and restaurants all along Commercial Street which runs parallel to the harbor, with many good spots for a bite to eat or a drink overlooking the water.

We learned two interesting things about Provincetown that we didn’t know before: (1) it is one of the most popular LGBT vacation spots in the country/world and (2) the pilgrims actually landed in Provincetown first and 5 weeks later decided to settle in Plymouth instead.

The Pilgrim Monument was built in the early 1900’s and commemorates the landing of the Mayflower in Provincetown.  It was built to resemble a tower in Siena Italy, for no reason other than that the person who won the design contest liked that tower.  We didn’t do it, but visitors can climb the 252 foot granite tower.

Scenery, seafood, wildlife, and history – we enjoyed all of this in Cape Cod.