Play Mystic for me

It was still drizzly when we got up this morning but it tapered off and the weather was tolerable.  We drove from the elbow to the underarm of the cape and stopped for a walk in Yarmouth, which was honoring fallen fire fighters day.

We walked through a residential neighborhood to the ocean and walked a short distance along a beach.

We saw some type of black bird—my guess is a cormorant.

We then stopped for a great lunch at Betsy’s Diner.

  
My sandwich special came with a cup of really good clam chowder and what surely was jello brand chocolate pudding.  Such nostalgia.

We continued south along the coast to New Bedford, where we stopped for the whaling museum.

New Bedford was the center of the commercial whaling industry at the turn of the century and the museum is really informative and well-presented.  They even included a section on the subsistence bowhead whaling done in the Barrow area and mentioned a member of the politically prominent Brower family from that area.

The museum has a replica of a whaling ship at half size—very cool in a Hornblower sort of way.

The scenery along the coast as we drove from New Bedford to Newport, Rhode Island, and beyond, was really interesting.

There is a lot of maritime history here and it made me think of my dad.  We saw a big naval ship in the harbor.  He would really have loved this area.  We followed the coast until we reached Mystic, Connecticut.

183 miles; Seaport Campground, Old Mystic, Connecticutt; N 41°24.024’  W 71°57.628’

Wet in Cape Cod

Today was our day to explore Cape Cod and it couldn’t be wetter and drearier.  We are right on the ocean but saw little of it and were buffetted about by the wind.  We stopped at the Cape Cod Museum of Fine Art, which is a really nice museum featuring local artists.  It had a study by Rockwell Kent and a painting by Hans Hoffman and a work by one of Emily’s Dartmouth art professors—Bogosian.  It was a very pleasant break from the rain. 

We also stopped at the Coast Guard facility in the national park. 

The Tiger shook from the wind and I sat out this visit.  Don took a short walk and was completely soaked. 

We then proceeded on scenic route 6A to Provincetown at the tip of the boot of the cape.  This is a great little town and it was actually quite lively with lots of shops, galleries, and restaurants open even though the season is over.  The pilgrims first landed at Provincetown but, finding no water, they continued on to Plymouth.  We really enjoyed the galleries

and a cup of soup to warm up at the Lobster shack. 

We are staying on the cape tonight—a very nice state campground.  We hope to see more on our drive tomorrow but the weather forecast is worse.

152 miles; Nickerson State Campground, Brewster, MA;  N 41° 45.768’ W 70° 01.881’

Dry in Wompatuck

Don dragged me out of bed at dawn to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic.  It was beautiful and probably even worth that last hour of sleep.

We brought out the camp chairs and watched the tide go out as we drank our morning coffee. 

Campers salute the sun

When there was enough beach for a walk, we headed out with the pups.  We saw shore birds, herring gulls with their young, and lots of clams.

Peeps and a gull

The little lumps are clams

If you look out to sea you can see a lighthouse in the distance (6 1/2 miles).  It marks a small stone island.  Apparently this pile of rocks was the cause of 14 shipwrecks and many deaths.  The lighthouse is over a hundred years old.  It was built of solid granite because its predecessors could not withstand  the pounding from the sea.

Resisting Karen’s insistence that we drive inland to the interstate, we followed the shore south to Kittery Point, a picturesque community on the southern edge of Maine.

A bridge connects the point with Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a wonderful place to spend an afternoon.

We walked along some of the waterfront, through a botanical garden that my mother would really enjoy,

and around Strawbery Banke Museum—a collection of 18th century buildings that provides a view of life in the 1700’s.









We also walked through the downtown area with its many restaurants and shops.  This appears to be the region’s cultural center—it has live theatre, music, an art museum, and a lively pub and restaurant scene.

From Portsmouth we headed south through Boston, learned that the big dig was big enough for the Tiger,

Cider and cheese

and found our way to Wompatuck State Park in Hingham, Massachusetts.  A sign at the registration office warns that alcohol is not permitted in Massachusetts state parks.  Fortunately for us, the state still has blue laws and, it being Sunday, we had been unable to find an open liquor store on our way to the campground.  (We regretted not stopping at the huge state-sponsored tax free liquor store that we passed when we crossed the New Hampshire border.)  

* miles;  N 42° 12.175’ W 070° 51.199’

A new dawn

We awoke Saturday morning to sunshine and a beautiful day. 

We can actually see the ocean from the campground. 

We drove to the top of Mount Battie and enjoyed the self-proclaimed best view in New England. 

  

The view is of Penobscot Bay and it is positively breathtaking.   

You can see for miles—towns, farms, islands, and the ocean.

We then drove slowly down the coast.  We stopped in Freeport—which is one enormous outlet mall with the flagship L.L. Bean store as its mothership, but, oddly, it charges full price. 


We continued south—fighting with Karen the entire way—until we came to Libby’s Oceanside Camp in York Harbor, our stop for the night.  Karen, by the way, is the voice Don chose for the GPS and Karen wanted us to take the interstate; we were unable to outfox her with false "via points" to try to keep her on the coastal route.  This meant she nagged at every intersection until we “muted” her. 

Libby’s Oceanside Camp is on a prime piece of real estate—a bluff overlooking the ocean on the southern coast of Maine.   The campers are very closely packed together but we have a piece of the bluff with views of the surf, which we can hear crashing on the rocks.

Folks are friendly here and there are a lot of dogs and one very cool classic trailer with etched glass and chrome trim.

Rain rain go away

The rain is actually pretty light but, because the weather is worse the farther south you go, we will stay another night.  This facility is first rate.   The views are reputed to be among the best in New England.  We hope to be able to confirm this fact before departing. 

It stopped raining mid-day, and we walked into Camden for shopping and a bowl of clam chowder. 

It started to rain again just as we returned to the Tiger.  And, oh did it rain!  It was really windy, and we lost shore power around 9 or 10 p.m. and we could hear the rain pounding through the night.  This was the last of tropical storm Nicole, which did considerable damage farther south in North Carolina.