Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Neither of us ever having been to Cape Cod, we decided to spend a day and explore the full length of the cape all the way to Provincetown at the very tip. 

                                        Cranberry Bog

After only a few miles we passed by some workers harvesting a cranberry bog next to the road. We stopped for some pictures. 

Though the bog wasn’t that far from the road, the work was being done on the far side so we were glad to have good zoom lenses on our camera so we could see what they were doing.

Back on the road, we crossed the Bourne Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal which marks the western limit of Cape Cod. 

Bourne Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal

Hard to get a picture with all the bars on the bridge!

From there we followed highway 28 south to Falmouth and stopped at the Nobska Lighthouse.

Nobska Lighthouse

We parked and took a few pictures of the lighthouse before heading back into Falmouth for lunch. 

View of Vineyard Sound from Nobska Lighthouse

We found a wonderful restaurant called La Cucina Sul Mare Italian Ristorante. Mary enjoyed her favorite Italian dish, Chicken Marsala while Lee tried the Chicken Parmesan sandwich with Parmesan sweet potato fries. Both were very tasty!

Some of the decor (that's not a real window!)

Mary's Chicken Marsala

Lee's Chicken Parmesan Sandwich

After lunch we continued our trip stopping next at the Judah Baker Windmill in South Yarmouth at Windmill Beach. We took some pictures of the Windmill and the Bass River adjacent to the mill.

Judah Baker Windmill

Then it was on to the next lighthouse, the Chatham light in Chatham (surprise!), MA out on the “elbow” of Cape Cod. Chatham was originally a twin light to distinguish it from Highland light, Cape Cod’s first lighthouse, and to establish range but one of the towers was moved 12 miles north to become Nauset light in the 1920s.

Next was Nauset Light at Nauset Light Beach. This beach and lighthouse is located within the Cape Cod National Seashore, a unit of the National Park Service. We stopped at the Salt Pond Visitors Center to get our National Parks Passport stamped but they had just closed when we got there so we drove out to the beach. The lighthouse is visible from the parking lot for the public beach and is located more than 300 feet from its original location. The light and the main keeper’s house was moved due to severe erosion of the bluff.  

Since we were beginning to loose daylight, we decided to drive to Race Point all the way at the end of the cape for the sunset. We didn’t quite make it to the lighthouse but we got within sight of the beach in time for some great sunset pictures.

Race Point Sunset

Once the sun was down we drove into Provincetown to take a look around. Unfortunately, Provincetown is not well-suited to a vehicle of our size. There proved to be no place to park so other than driving through, we were unable to do any real sightseeing. We’ll have to make it a point next time on the cape to drive right to Provincetown and then work our way back toward the mainland. Oh well, live and learn!