Next day was picture day for the whole family. Here is a picture of me with my mom and siblings. The extended family photo is shown back at the Boston Trip opening webpage. How long before we get a chance to take another shot like this of the entire family? 5 years?
Melanie and I decide to drive out to sightsee Cape Cod. We invited James and Ed to join us. (They had been camping in Gettysburg when their families visited the Cape, so this was also a first chance for them to see the famous penisula.)
I was surprised at how big Cape Cod is. It looks like such a tiny piece of land on the maps of the US. We drove a long way to get to the tip of the Cape, which is where Provincetown is located. It was a big fishing city, but now there is hardly any fish left to pull out of the Atlantic Ocean. I was also surprised at how populated and wooded Cape Cod is. I expected desolate windswept dunes. But most of Cape Cod is wooded landscape, just like all the other terrain around Boston. There are cities all along the cape. Only at certain spots are there the expected beaches.
At Provincetown is a large monument to war veterans. We didn't climb it, because we had just climbed the monument at Bunker Hill the day before. (I think this one was a mere 180 steps, so we wimped out.)
We did find some beaches. They were deserted, because it was a cloudy overcast day. In fact, we got sprinkled upon as soon as we got the first beach. So we didn't build any castles in the sand.
The photo is my nephews Ed and James. The beach is the site where the first transatlantic cable came ashore. The other end of the cable terminated in England (but the map showed the cable going to New Foundland first, and then crossing the Atlantic. Was the signal regenerated at the New Foundland landfall? They must have amplified it there - the sign said the signal quality was so poor they sometimes couldn't make out the Morse code.) The cable was nine huge wires bundled together and unrolled to the sea floor. Apparently they still dig up some remenants of the old cable. I wonder how many tons of copper went into the construction.
Leaving Cape Cod isn't easy - it has bad traffic problems. There is only one major road out. Although we visited on a weekday with overcast/rainy skies, there were still many people on the Cape. I guess this is true everywhere - too many people trying to see our nation's treasures. Where are the flying jetpacks that will eliminate cars and roads?
