2021 Life Logs, Day 226: High Head Beach and Provincetown with Kevin and Claire
Date: Saturday, August 14, 2021
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds, Still Hot and Humid; High Temp 86, Low Temp 66 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
This was a day of exploration. Kevin and Claire wanted to take their motor home to Hyannis to empty the holding tank. I figured if we were going to drive to Hyannis, we might as well drive on out to the Outer Cape to see the seals and maybe a shark. So off we went. We got to the waste management place in Barnstable and successfully emptied the holding tank. And then the adventure began. We had planned to eat breakfast in the motor home after emptying the tank, but I assumed we would drive to some lovely little spot to do that. Instead, we found a ‘lovely spot’ in the waste management facility and ate there. I call that adventure! Then it was on to see the seals.
A couple of years ago, I went to a beach in Truro and saw hundreds of seals so I decided we would go back to that place. I knew the beach had ‘Head’ in the name and last night I got on Google Maps and found Head of the Meadow Beach. I figured that must be it . . . but I figured wrong. The place I had gone to was down a long unpaved road and you had to walk quite a distance through deep sand to get to the dunes that you then had to climb over to get to the beach. When we arrived at Head of the Meadow Beach there was a paved parking lot and a parking attendant to take your money. Could the place have changed that much in just two years? I didn’t think so, but we went in anyway and walked over the dune. What we saw was a mass of mass of humanity sitting under brightly colored umbrellas, lifeguard stands, and no seals. Claire started talking to one of the lifeguards and I told him what I had seen two years ago. He replied saying we needed to head to the next beach to the north, High Head. Should have checked my old logs last night.
We headed back out to the highway just a little north and turned onto High Head Road. Yep. This was the right road . . . a long, unpaved road with lots of pot holes. But we made it and parked Kevin and Claire’s motor home, Tarmy (named after a Ptarmigan). We then began the long walk down a road with deep sand, crossed the high dune, and immediately spotted the seals.
Much better. However, instead of the empty beach that I had encountered two years ago, there were lots of recreational vehicles lining the beach. The first time I had gone it was in September or October and there was no one else there. But even though there were people, there were lots of seals and we thoroughly enjoyed walking down the beach and out a sand spit with a few lone seals on either side of the sand spit and a Merganser duck that decided to skitter across the sand spit in front of us. The sailboat that Kevin and Claire sold last fall after living aboard for many years was named Merganser. Somehow this seemed like a good omen to me. There were not hundreds of seals, but there were enough to satisfy us. We observed, took photos, looked at them through binoculars, and just generally enjoyed a walk on a beach backed with high dunes. It was beautiful.
We walked back to Tarmy where Kevin fixed a huge and wonderful salad for each of us. It was quite a treat to be able to fix and eat our main meal of the day in the motor home. I loved traveling around the world on a sailboat because I always had my home with me. Today in the motor home felt the same way. After we ate, we decided to venture further out the Cape to Provincetown. Finding a place to park a motor home was a bit of a challenge, but Claire was at the wheel and was successful. But it meant walking a bit to the main street and that was going to take longer than we had planned. I had left Shadow at home and if we walked into town, we all felt it was going to take too long. Shadow had never been left for this many hours. So I sent a text to friends Karen and Peter Baranowski to see if they might go to my house and left Shadow out for a little pee break. Karen texted back that she and her granddaughter Ellen would love to do that, so it all worked out. Thank you, thank you, to Karen and Ellen. This gave us the time to walk down to Commercial Street in Provincetown to experience the hustle and bustle of a very popular Cape Cod destination. We didn’t stay long, but we all enjoyed the visit.
Once home, we ended another day by sitting on the dock to watch the last light of day disappear. We have all been amazed that we have had no mosquitos here in the evenings. Kevin and Claire will be here one more day. I’m hoping we can have one more mosquito free evening on the dock. It is a delightful way to end our days.
