Still on the East Coast

It has been a while since my last post.  Excuses are – we were in Connecticut busy visiting family and friends then we had no cell service / internet at Shenandoah National Park and on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Real reason – laziness.

In my last post we were at Acadia National Park in Maine.  We enjoyed the “quiet” side of the park on the Schoodic Peninsula more than the main area of the park.  Update on Tim’s wrist is the doctor called a few days later and said the wrist is actually broken and he only needs a cast if it hurts a lot, which it does not so he should just keep wearing the brace and get an x-ray in a couple weeks to make sure it is healing correctly.  Life on the road is difficult when you only have use of one hand.   I try to do as much as I can but there are a lot of things that only he knows how to do.

After Maine we decided to visit Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  I have great memories of camping there with my family when I was a child.  With the sand dunes and beaches it was a fun place we all liked to go.  Tim had only been there for a day trip once a long time ago so we decided to give it a try.

We stayed at a campground very close to Provincetown which is a tourist town all the way on the tip of the arm of Cape Code.  We were able to walk into town as well as walk to Race Point Beach.  We are finding with the van the ideal situation is to just park it somewhere, like at a campground, then walk places.  When we do take the van into town or to a trailhead it can be hard to find a place to park it.  In the East here things are very packed in so it can be hard to maneuver a large vehicle.  We are also finding a lot of places are not really walker friendly, as was the case at the Cape.  Walking to town there are no sidewalks in a lot of places and of course cars are going fast which makes for a dangerous situation.  Walking to the beach was a little better because part way there we came across a bike trail which you are allowed to walk on. As we were walking out to the beach we started seeing RVs parked out on the beach.  I read that the park service allows a certain number of people to get permits to camp on the beach but you have to be totally self-contained, meaning you have to have your own bathroom inside your vehicle.  The campers looked like they were really enjoying themselves camping on the beach and fishing.

A lot of the beach on Cape Cod is National Seashore and the park service does have some visitor centers and ranger programs available.  The highlight of our time on Cape Cod has to be seeing a couple hundred seals “hauling out” on a sandbar.  This is when the seals pull themselves out of the water and rest.   There was a ranger-led walk on Head of the Meadow Beach to the location where the seals would be.  We really enjoy the ranger-led activities because they give you so much background information and history.