Start- Bay View Campground Bourne, Cape Cod MA

End- Bay View Campground Bourne, Cape Cod MA

Miles- 124
Total Miles- 376

Today we got a leisurely start. Tom went for a run while Ten and I strolled through the campground. Then we grabbed showers (had to get the marshmallow from s’mores out of my hair) and had oatmeal and coffee at camp.

We met up with our friends David and Jermaine who are in town from Detroit for the race. The four of us and Tenzin wandered through Falmouth and we sat outside at Laureen’s for lunch. Tenzin and I enjoyed some lovely chicken salad with cranberries (he’s nit as discerning about chicken salad as Tom and I are, but he enjoys it just the same). Tenzin was well behaved and sat on top of my shopping bag (he prefers to not sit on the ground)- note to self, take him a little mat. We were happy to hear that David had recently settled a difficult legal battle he has been going through with a former business partner.

After lunch we decided to drive towards Provincetown and check out some beaches and we meandered through a bunch of towns.

One of the interesting things we noticed about Cape Cod is the large number of bookstores. Every town has at least one little independent store and likely a used store as well. There are significantly more bookshops than ice cream shops which either says something about what these folks like to do with their leisure time or something about how many months of the year it is not ice cream weather.

Another thing we noticed about Cape Cod is that in Massachusetts they seem to like using “mouth” in place names the way New York uses “kill”. They have Falmouth and Yarmouth and Weymouth and Plymouth. We have Fishkill and Peekskill and Plattekill. Our kills were named by the Dutch for creeks. And from the map it is clear their mouths were named for round bays shaped like mouths.

We ended up at a beach out at the Cape Cod National Seashore. One with cliffs and a steep slope down to the beach. I was cautiously inching my way down the slope when Tom ran back and pulled me down the last little bit. We walked the beach and realized it was cold and rocky, but pretty. Back to the car and we drove for miles to find an ice cream shop. It was one of the best hot fudge sundaes ever and Tenzin totally enjoyed his vanilla cup. I started to worry that dogs might get ice cream headaches.

We got back to camp just before dark. Tom was dismayed to realize that the open air theatre where they had a live band playing loudly was on a cliff overlooking our camper. After we found out that the band would play till 10pm, I tried to convince him to just go with it. We have 3 weeks to talk to one another. One night of listening to the Klassics play Elvis covers won’t kill us. After a dinner of steaks cooked in our fire pie cookers and some pasta and snow peas and wine, he even did the big shoe dance on the picnic table. We were tucked into the Shadow by 10pm since we had to get up and out early in the morning to get to the race. We heard a weird noise and I got out to check. Our neighbors had a blender and were making margaritas. They partied much of the night.

FYI- our Internet access is somewhat sporadic, so I’ll post when we can.

Pics from today are here- http://bit.ly/ceTmXn