barbaraq: Blue Goose ~ Day 84

August 23, 2014 ~ West Yarmouth, MA to Wareham, MA

After working a few hours, I drove to the southeast tip of Cape Cod, to Monomoy NWR. It's an interesting place as most of the refuge is two large islands accessible by boat, but there is a piece of auto-accessible Morris Island that is also part of the refuge and is where the Visitor Center is located. The long and narrow outer islands change over the years, and breaks or re-connections happen during great storms.

Visitors can take a "ferry" and tour the islands. One of these returned while I was on the beach. At first I thought it had got too close to shore and grounded, but then watched while people just got off in the shallow water ("wait for the sandbar!") and walked to shore.

Monomoy NWR touring ferry - MA

What back stories there must be to the creation of refuges in prime seashore venues. There are often grand summer homes very close with "Private Property" warnings, although since Monomoy was a former military gunnery range, perhaps the refuge was welcomed. Still, we all know how proprietary property owners can be.

I spent 2-3 hours on the beach, poking along.

Monomoy NWR - MA

It was perfect beach weather and one area had saltwater marsh and no residences. The public beaches were in the distance with windsurfers and a few boats, and there were relatively few people close to the refuge - young kids with bright pails and shovels, a preteen boy fishing in knee deep water, Asian or Quebecois tourists exclaiming and photographing, a little girl catching minnows moving out with the tide. An Osprey and Willets flew over the marsh.

Chatham had had wall-to-wall tourists and I moved at 2 mph through the town so decided to head for US 6, the alternate east-west route, but as I was headed north to pick that up, I came upon the Cape Cod National Seashore Visitor Center. And discovered that much of the Cape that runs north of here, including that piece that curves back on itself at the tip is federally owned...your and my property. The whole scene was more pristine with dunes and ponds and beaches and impressive biking trails...not nearly as zuzu as the southern shore. The area surrounding Provincetown way at the end looks very much like Lake Michigan. The parking lots had room and the beaches were not unbearably crowded.

Provincetown was, but the annual Carnival was this week, this year's theme being Comic Book Capers, and mainly a gay / lesbian celebration. (A waitress the next night whispered to me that this is what P-town is....if I didn't know, which I did...) So there were tons of people out and about, getting ready to eat, walking along the beaches in town, and just generally loving the perfect summer late afternoon. I came on a place where I could look down on the beaches. The tide was out so there were hundreds of shorebirds furiously eating. It was a perfect place use the scope and watch them as they weren't silhouetted, which is often the default beach condition for watching shorebirds.

Provincetown, MA

Provincetown - MA

So, I did that for an hour. Parking along here was "Live Parking Only" but that worked for me.

I thought I would find a cool little place to have some wine and lobster or chowder and a salad, but the restaurants were full with people waiting in crowded parking lots, and I headed back on route 6 (very quick with limited access and a totally green corridor) to Wareham where I stayed for the night in the same spot as Friday. I thought of all the hundreds of times Bob and Faith with their family and friends made this trip. One of my favorite vignettes on this trip was coming on Hill Top Parking which is right across from the ferry dock to Nantucket and where they always parked. It's like a private home with the whole front yard devoted to parking on a slight grassy hill. A memory of the time Maria and I parked there was vivid and poignant.

Many of the homes I passed had the grey cedar shingles although some had them only on the sides of the homes, not the front. Why??

I walked to 99, a regional restaurant chain, except the waitress told me they don't call them chains anymore; they are called "corporates." She was full of information about the original owner (Charley Doe), a great guy according to her, who significantly helped fund the Pine Street Inn in Boston, a homeless shelter which tradition continues today. She was interested in why I was in Wareham, and we talked about what I was doing...."You have chutzpah" she told me. She first asked if it wasn't "scary?" She was articulate and chatty but not in an obnoxious way. I ordered a seafood platter which was good, much better than I expected, with stuffed clam, seafood chowder, some white fish (schrod) and shrimp, both lightly breaded, but the breading easily fell off and the fish was tender and tasty.

WWW.RELUCTANTGOURMET.COM

The word scrod is said to be derived from the now-obsolete Dutch word schrode, which means “a piece cut off.” If this is the true origin of the word scrod, it makes sense that it would mean a piece of fish that had been cut, or filleted.