Sep 4-7, 2024 – Chatham, MA
Each year our good friends, Janice and Kevin, rent a house in or near Chatham on Cape Cod for a family vacation. Happily, they also invite us and some other friends to join them. This year the entourage included son, Graham with his wife, Heather, with children, Delilah & Leon, as well as their daughter, Kim with her husband, Michael. Rounding out the gathering were two young dogs, Henry and Louie. It was an active houseful!
We won’t detail our activity except to point out a few highlights.
With soft white sand and tidal flats that extend nearly half a mile, Skaket Beach is an amazing place to wade on the flats. And the beach faces west so it is great for watching the sun set. As it happened on our first evening, low tide at the beach coincided with sunset. So off we went. The dogs went, too, and they had a great time running and chasing each other through the shallow water. Oh, yeah, and the sunset was pretty, too!
The “Hangar B” restaurant is a breakfast tradition, so we headed there on our second morning. Located on the second floor of the administrative building of the Chatham Airport, it’s a very small place but they serve up innovative and delicious food for breakfast and lunch. Sandy, Janice & Kim walked a few miles on the bike trail on the way back to the house.
This year the weather at the Cape was rather cool and breezy but beautiful, so we didn’t spend as much time at the beach as usual.
During warm weather, most of the seating at Mac’s Shack in Wellfleet is in a large tent with a floor of oyster shells. They serve great food and tons of raw oysters. We enjoyed dinner there one of our nights but were reminded of our visit there a couple of years ago when torrential rains caused water to flow right through the seating area. Staff dutifully created small ditches to channel the water away from guests’ tables. They then proceeded to race toy boats down the channels. Great fun!
Graham and family arrived well after dinner time on our third day. Since the kids had already eaten we met at the popular Ice Cream Café for a festive arrival activity. Ice Cream Café makes all their ice cream on site in small batches. They have a huge number of flavors including: Vanilla, Choc. Chip Cookie Dough, Chocolate Chip, Snickers, Salty Caramel, Coffee, Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, Almond Joy, Maple Walnut, Peanut Butter Cup, Orange Sherbet, Mocha Chip, Creamsicle, Blueberry, Mocha Chip, Chocolate, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, Dark Chocolate Chip, Dark Chocolate Almond, Brownie Batter Swirl, Cake Batter, Chocolate Chili Pepper, Rocky Road, Peppermint Stick, Cotton Candy, Pistachio, Pumpkin Pie, Rocky Road, Strawberry, Black Raspberry, Peach, Banana, Coconut, Key Lime, Mango, Ginger, Cocoamint Chip, Red Velvet Cake, Cookies & Cream, Coffee Oreo, Indian Pudding, Nauset Beach. Of course, they are also happy to make you any sort of sundaes and other ice cream embellishments on demand!!
After all ten of us waited through the long line trying to figure out what kind of ice cream treat we wanted, we finally got to enjoy our choices. Delicious!
The other beach we visited as a group was Nauset Beach near the Coat Guard station. There is no public parking nearby but there is a nice multipurpose path that leads to it. We walked the path from the Doane Rock Picnic Area and had fun on the beach with the kids. There were few people there since it was cool and breezy and the surf was a bit high. The two dogs had fun running in the sand and Delilah and Leon had fun making sand angels and playing in the sand.
Sep 8, 2024 – Landisville, PA
All good things come to an end and this four month odyssey was no exception. We departed fairly early from Chatham and, with the exception of a couple of construction delays on I-95, had a mostly easy drive in good weather back to Landisville.
We usually end these blogs with some statistics. We don’t have as many as some earlier trips but here are a few:
- We spent 120 days on the road.
- We camped in about 35 different places.
- The RV put on a little over 4,200 miles.
- The Honda Fit we towed got a lot of use and was probably driven more miles than the RV but we don’t have numbers. Having the car for local trips and carrying regular bicycles on the back of the car was a combination that worked well for us.
We thoroughly enjoyed this mostly unscripted trip!