South to Massachusetts

Today we leave to go back south via Boston to Provincetown, Massachusetts. It'll be a long drive.

It is now 6 a.m. We have been up since 4.30 a.m. to drive back up Cadillac Mountain, this time to see the sunrise at 5 a.m. We then took the 50 km drive around the island (we are on Desert Island, connected to the mainland by a bridge) & the scenery was just lovely - we saw a deer, the early (!) morning light was beautiful & the trees very pretty with their blossom or new Spring leaf growth.

Saturday

Am continuing this today due to lack of Internet access yesterday so I wan't able to post then. Well, the drive south went reasonably well despite Tom-Tom (the GPS) being very naughty. We have taken to calling Tom-Tom by the name "Julie" (after the Amtrak agent in Don Watson's book American Journeys). Julie - generally speaking - has been very helpful, but yesterday she kept taking us in the wrong direction. Very frustrating.

The journey south was further frustrated by 2 long delays: one through the tunnel in Boston where we sat for what seemed like hours in a queue of traffic (fortunately Julie is a woman of few words so at least we didn't have the GPS going crazy trying to give us instructions to move forward while we were stuck in the tunnel!); and then later as we were getting closer to Cape Cod when roadwork on the Sagamore Bridge onto the Cape Cod peninsula held up traffic in a delay I don't think I've experienced since childhood. The traffic was unbelievable. We were exhausted by the time we arrived in Provincetown.

Unwittingly we seem to have arrived in the Gay Capital of the world. Apparently this has been the case since 1949, so My Friend tells me - such a fountain of information!

Provincetown is very pretty. Lots of lovely water scenery. Very touristy. It was the initial anchoring place of the pilgrims travelling on The Mayflower in 1620 before they proceeded onto Plymouth, MA.

This morning we drove to Dennis, hired some great road bikes & did the Cape Cod Rail Trail (about 50 miles). Feeling a bit used but energy stocks just now replenished with a burger (& fries - of course!) for dinner at The Squealing Pig restaurant where the crowd was really INTO watching the Kentucky Derby on the Big Screen.

On the way back from our ride, we stopped off at the Cape Cod Highland Lighthouse. And we happened upon the North Truro radar station - an Airforce facility, now closed (in 1994) - but which has been a strategic US East Coast base, particularly during the Cold War.

Sunday

Leaving Cape Cod area this morning after breakfast. We were planning to spend half the day here but the traffic is so appalling we have no choice but to get going back to Boston. Will do stuff there to make up for the short time we had there when we arrived there the other day from New York. We will drop the car at the airport first, then take the metro into town before catching a bus to Albany. We pick the train up there tomorrow morning to head up to Niagara Falls.