America 2018: If You're Fond of Sand Dunes and Salty Air ...

... then Cape Cod is definitely for you. We've spent a week here exploring:- Cape Cod's fabled coastlines; the quaint 'period' towns and villages, with their white-steepled churches, white clapperboard and often picket-fenced, always manicured-lawned houses; and the many lighthouses and fish-pier markets where hundreds of seals, of which we've seen dozens and dozens, come to bask and forage. Indeed, the increasing number of seals (who provide tasty meals for sharks) choosing the harbour of Chatham on the peninsula's south-eastern corner has this year resulted in two attacks, one of them fatal, by great white sharks on people swimming in the sparkling blue waters of Nantucket Sound. (So, if you're still scarred by 'Jaws', then maybe this isn't quite the place for you after all!)

[Incidentally, the title I've given this particular posting, which we've seen several times inscribed on restaurants or shop doorways has been running through my head with a particular melody attached, ever since we arrived. Finally, I had to google it. I discovered that the lyrics are originally from 1950s song 'Old Cape Cod' by Patti Page, though i think I'd remembered it from a more recent song 'At The River' by Groove Armada (introduced to us by daughter and son-in-law, Cath and Math), where just this phrase from the full lyrics is repeated over and over again in an ethereal background to a groovy soundtrack.]

We've been staying in 'Linda's Quiet Hideaway' in Yarmouth Port, an excellent location from which to explore the whole of the Cape in the white VW Beetle convertible, no less!, which we'd been allocated when we went to pick up our hire car before leaving NYC. As well as exploring the beautiful white sandy beaches of the Cape Cod National Seashore itself, we've visited:- its oldest town, Sandwich (founded in 1637); the quirkiest, hippiest, flamboyantist and 'far-out-est' (in the geographical and metaphorical senses) Provincetown, once an outpost for fringe writers and artists, and nowadays a favourite destination for LGBTQ people - rather like Brighton in Sussex. [We can recommend the Purple Feather cafe for its gorgeous brunch menu.]; Brewster and its old-fashioned country store, which has been in operation since 1866 and now houses museum-quality memorabilia alongside its penny candies and more standard fare; the pretty towns of Chatham and Harwich Port, both of which were holding end-of-summer-season 'sidewalk sales' outside all of the shops along their main streets, making for a festive atmosphere; and West Yarmouth, where we enjoyed the live music and arts and crafts stalls at their Columbus Day festival this weekend.

We also spent some time exploring the port town of Hyannis - still summer home to the Kennedy family and the place where JFK spent most of his summers throughout the whole of his life, including his all-too-brief Presidential years. There, we went into a small museum holding a beautifully-documented very personally-oriented photographic and video exhibition, and walked past the harbour [we can recommend Spankey's Clam Shack on the harbour-front for its clam chowder and stuffed quahogs] to visit a JFK and a Korean War memorial (still largely a 'forgotten war' to many in the UK, though one which has a particular resonance in my family, as my Uncle Colin served there during his time with the Black Watch Regiment all those years ago). The JFK museum, and our previous experiences at the LBJ, Carter and Clinton Presidential Libraries two year ago, whetted our appetite for more, and so we also spent a day braving the traffic around Boston, to get to the much larger, more politically-oriented JFK Presidential Library at Columbia Point, a hugely impressive piece of architecture overlooking the equally-impressive Boston Bay. A fascinating, if still sorrowful even after all these years, experience.

Tomorrow we're off to Intervale in The White Mountains of New Hampshire, hopefully to see the Fall colours.

A full Cape Cod photo collection follows!