Cape Cod and Boston (Monday, August 31st, 2015)

The end of August is a great time to come to Cape Cod. Traffic is light, hotel rooms are plentiful and best of all, the weather is still warm and sunny most of the time.

We stayed last night at the Super 8 Hotel in Hyannis, which is towards the beginning of the cape. The room was a little dated, but very nice and spacious and clean, and best of all, it had a great showerhead. I never realized that I am a showerhead coinsurer, but I guess I am.

Our room was $74, all included with the AARP discount. They also offered a complimentary breakfast in the front office, which was simple, but very nice to have. The owner was working the front desk. He was from India and was very interesting to talk to. He was also very helpful about giving us ideas of what to do and see. I’m sure that their rates are higher than this during high season, but they were definitely affordable compared to a lot of the other options.

We had breakfast in our hotel lobby, then packed up the car and headed further down the cape. Our first stop was Fort Hill in Eastham, where the main attraction is the former house (built in 1868) of Captain Edward Penniman, a very successful whaler on Cape Cod. The entry arch to the property is lower jawbone of a 63 foot finback whale that washed ashore in a nearby town in 1966.  It is the third jawbone that has served at the entry arch to the property.  In the barn there are also several old wagons that were really interesting to see. 

Steve under the jawbone arch

Wagons in the barn

There are also some nice trails in this area, but we didn’t have time to walk them since it was about time to check in for our flights on Southwest. Check in is 24 hours prior to the flight and we did not have good cell reception, so we headed back closer to town. We pulled into a small parking lot to see if our cell service was better, and to our surprise, it was the lot for the Eastham Information Center, and they had great wifi, so we used their wifi to get checked in for tomorrow’s flight. We also went in to the information center to get some maps and information. 

Our next stop up the cape was a spot called Marconi Station Site. It is an area up above the beach that offers a view from several points. The only point that really had a good view was the center point, where you could overlook the coastline in both directions. We stood there for quite some time and watched seals playing in the surf below us. 

The point to the right had a great deck, but not a very good view

The center point had the best view, but no board walk, so the biting flies were fierce

Seals playing the surf below us.  So much fun to watch

But unfortunately, there were black flies biting our ankles, so we moved on. There is also a boardwalk through the marsh that would have been interesting, but the biting flies were bad enough that we chose to skip the boardwalk and continue on. 

At the intersection where Route 6 and Route 6A come together, we came to the town of Truro. There are a couple of things worth seeing here. On your left at the “Y” in the road is a place called the Atlantic Spice Company. It is a fabulous store full of spices and teas, as well as lots of fun cooking gadgets. All of the spices and teas are at wholesale prices, and there is a great selection to choose from. We spent quite a bit of time in this charming big store, and picked out some fun teas to take back for the girls. We also picked up their catalog, since they will ship their items to you, and shipping is free for an order of $50 or more. 

In addition to the store up front, the Atlantic Spice Company has a huge shipping and receiving area

On the right side at the “Y” is a winery called Truro Vineyards. It was a very pretty little place, with tables and umbrellas out front, and a gift shop and wine tasting inside. There are very nice restrooms on the far side, outside of the gift shop. They also had a food truck on sight, and in a small outside bar they had rum tastings for the rum that they also produce onsite. You can get to this vineyard from Route 6 or 6A, as it is located right in the “Y” of the two roads.

Look at these beautiful vineyards!

A Chinese Mulberry Tree planted in 1870

The rum tasting bar

The town of Truro is the point on the cape where it finally started to narrow, and looked much more like what we expected the cape to look like. It finally became less wooded, with more dunes covered in grass and lower vegetation. We enjoyed seeing this part of the cape the most. We chose to take Route 6A since it is the more scenic route, and it took us into a small town of Wellfleet. This is more of a town for the locals than the tourists, and is a big fishing town. We walked out on the pier, which had a lot of clam boats mooring. 

A large lobster boat mooring in the small town of Wellfleet

On the pier in Wellfleet.  There are so many working boats around us

Lots of clam boats

Right by the pier, there was a restaurant and seafood market. The restaurant had some really yummy looking items at fair prices, and the seafood market was small, but had a wonderful selection of beautiful seafood.

As we continued down 6A, we finally found Provincetown, the very touristy town at the end of the cape. Provincetown is a very artsy community with very narrow roads. Since we were there in late August, there weren’t many tourists left and the town was rather quiet. But even during quiet times, the streets are full of bikes and pedestrians and a few cars. 

Looking down the beach, back toward Truro and Hyannis

Looking up the beach toward the end of the cape

It’s kind of chaotic if you are from a slower paced community, and that is what makes it fun. We found a nice deli for lunch on Trip Advisor, called Relish. They had a nice selection of healthy sandwiches and salads to choose from. 

Steve and I decided to split a medium Tabouli salad and a broiled salmon filet. It was a great choice, although we thought the portion was small for the price. We also bought one of their big cookies to split and a giant water, and enjoyed it all on a nice park bench since there is no seating at Relish. Total for the salad, salmon, cookie and water was $20.

Very good salad and salmon, but the portion certain should have been bigger

After lunch we made our way back through Provincetown (Relish is on the far side) to where our car was parked. We had found a free parking place along Commercial Street, which was about ½ mile before the main downtown district. It was a very pretty walk, so we didn’t mind it at all. Beyond that point, all parking appears to be a flat rate of $15-$20 per day to park.

Once we left Provincetown, we headed for Boston. Our last night’s stay would be at the Holiday Inn Express, Saugus, near the airport. Traffic flowed very nicely, so we got off the cape in good time. As we were leaving the cape, we started thinking about the number of towns and people that are on the cape at any one time, and how hard it would be to evacuate in the event of a hurricane. There is only one highway going in and out, so it would take days.  

We noticed that we would be going right past Plymouth, so we decided that would be a good place for a rest stop. We took a few pictures of Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower II.  

Here it is!

The building housing Plymouth Rock. You can see the rock on the sand in the center of the structure.

The Mayflower II, a replica of the Mayflower that you can tour.  We were amazed at how small it was.  

The car was running low on fuel when we left Plymouth, but the fuel gauge said we had enough to get to our hotel with 40 miles leftover so Steve decided to push it to try to stay ahead of rush-hour traffic. Big mistake…to make a long story short things got really dicey in that traffic hit just as we were going through downtown Boston and the car went from saying we had 60 miles of fuel left to get it now! We made it but it was ugly. Lesson learned was keep it on the full half of the tank!

Dinner was in Saugus, Massachusetts at a restaurant right near our hotel. It was called Sake Japanese Restaurant, and was by far our best restaurant meal of the entire trip especially for the price. We found it on Trip Advisor, and it was rated 6 out of 110 restaurants in Saugus. 

We ordered two of the Sake Specials at $35 per person, which were large meals, in hopes that we would have enough for leftovers on the way home. The meals also included a wonderful miso soup and a large salad which we forgot to take pictures of. We’ll let the pictures speak for themselves on our entrees.

And yes, there was enough for leftovers, so we’ll be the envy of the Kansas City Airport at lunchtime.  They only packed us chopsticks, no silverware, so we did get a few strange stares as we enjoyed it the next day.

The #1 rated restaurant in Saugus was a donut shop, which we found funny because the two things that we saw the most of on this trip were Dunkin Donuts and miniature/adventure golf. They are everywhere! We think there are more donuts and mini golf holes per capita than there are brewpubs in Colorado.