East Coast Trip Page 4
Monday, June 4, 2007: It rained all day on Sunday. On and off and sometimes heavy so we were kind of stuck again. We drove around the cape area, midcape, mainly, looking for things to do, and we found some cute towns along the way. There was a lot of hiking and "stuff" we wanted to be out and doing, but the rain was a preventing factor. I'm afraid I did a lot of complaining and whining about the rain. We retired early to the camp, ate hastily under the tarp and read until sleep came, once again with the wind and rain hitting the tarp, but once we lowered it to right over the tent, things were surpisingly cozy inside. Damp, but cozy. Tuesday was supposed to clear up.
Tuesay, June 5, 2007: The rain did clear up, especially in the morning so we headded out in the sunshine which I was absolutely estatic to see. We wanted to do so many hikes, so we started out at the main Salt Pond area. We got a trail map and some guidane from a ranger, we were not really in time to catch any ranger lead activities, but we headded into a short hike taking us out onto the salt pond which was very very cool. We saw a gorgrous red cardinal male and female pair, as well as an osprey waiting in the marsh and what we think was some kind of an egret or heron. His head was red and his body black, but he looked very heron-ish. The sun was out and it was beautiful.
the salt marsh, although
this picture in no way does it justice.
We also hiked around in the swamps- both the red cedar and the white cedar swamps, getting eaten by mosquitoes and trying to hastily take pictures but the vegitation is so dense that none of my shots really look very good. They estimate 24 feet of peet is in the swamps nowadays, which left me wondering if I fell in would it eat me up and preserve me like those creepy cadavers they doscovered in Scotland?
There was an afternoon thindershower, but we drove into Wellfleet for lunch and had the most amazing seafood- I had a crab cake and salad with some butterflied and cajun spiced shrimp which David really ate and I tried. The food was nothing short of amazing. He had seafood stew which he was absolutely loving. I tried a shrimp and liked it. I'm not sure this makes me a regular shrimp eater, but it was mild tasting and really good with the cajun seasonings.
After lunch we had more sun, so we drove around and did some more hikes on First Encounter Beach and at the lower salt ponds. After all that, we drove back up the coast off the cape to Plymouth were we signed up for a haunted night tour with the woman we met two nights earlier and the fat black pug. It was kind of fun- creepy as hell walking around a cemetery at night with graves dating back to the 1600s- and I even got an orb in the creepy tree that David thought looked like Disney's Haunted Mansion.
can you see the orb in the upper part of the tree branch? We didn't find an explanation for this globe of light other than "ghost" activity. To the right are creepy graves. We overall had a fun time on the haunted trip, and drove back into camp really, really late to sleep in a damp tent with damp bedding. Wednesday morning we were scheduled for my favorite part of the trip: the whale watch out of Provincetown. I was not disappointed.
the lake on which we're camping at Nickerson State Park.