The Pilgrim's Progress

Good Morning Cape Cod. We started our day with blueberry crisp, bran muffins, Italian scrambled eggs with sausage and home-made sourdough toast. All courtesy of our hosts at the Mulberry Tree Inn.

Our trip this morning took us from our B&B to the tip of Cape Cod at Provincetown. We got a kick from driving under the Cape Cod Rail Trail overpasses where we'd ridden yesterday.

When we got to the end of the Highway 6 (the main road that travels the length of the Cape), we pulled off at Herring Cove Beach. This is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore and the entrance fee was $25. Kathy said, "Don't you have anything for seniors." He told us about the passes that were available and then I finally realized this wasn't a county or state park, but a national park. We already had an annual senior pass, but it had lapsed, so this time we bought a lifetime pass for $80. We'll also need it when we get to Acadia National Park. (We got it in Kathy's name because we both figure she'll live longer than I will.)

We took a walk across the dunes, down to the cove, where we could look across Hatches Harbor and in the distance see the Race Point Lighthouse. In one of the inlets, we saw the skeleton of what appeared to be a fairly old small boat.

At the end of the beach is a small park commemorating the Pilgrim's landing on November 9 in 1620. They would spend five weeks at the current location of Provincetown, where they all signed the Mayflower Compact, before deciding that the grass was greener on the other side of the bay in Plymouth. Around the turn of the century, Provincetown built the Pilgrim Monument to commemorate the landing.

It cost $20 to climb the tower (and neither of us were that enthusiastic about it anyway). So, we drove through Ptown's Sunday crowds and headed back the way we came. It was just about noon, (9:00 am on the West Coast), and so we tuned in to the Calvary Chapel Livestream on our phone and listened as we drove down the Cape. 

When church was over, we continued listening to Caleb's Crossing. (Bethia's father has died and she has just moved to work at a prep school next door to Harvard.) When we got to Plymouth, we walked around the Mayflower II, a modern recreation of the original Mayflower. I wanted to go to the Plimouth Plantation Living History museum, but Kathy wasn't that keen. She said it looked like a Disneyfied version of the Pilgrims for kids.

Since we didn't have a lot of time anyway, I took the obligatory selfie with Plymouth Rock (most likely not really from 1620) instead.

Then Kathy took a picture of me next to Governor William Bradford, the noted historian who wrote the most extensive extemporaneous history of Plymouth Plantation.

It was 2:30 by now, so we walked up to Main Street for some lunch. Have you noticed how everything tastes better when you're really hungry. This was my bacon, BBQ, onion-ring, pickled jalapeno burger. It just hit the spot.

We got to the Holiday Inn Express in Quincy around 4:30. The hotel offers free self-service laundry, so Kathy had been doing a load while I finish up today's blog. We chose a hotel outside of Boston because parking in town is hard to find and expensive. Tomorrow we intend to get on the MTBA (subway), and spend the day exploring the Freedom Trail.