A beautiful weekend on the Cape

A couple weekends ago I went down the Cape to see Jackie and Chris (we're still working out his nickname). If you have never been to the Cape, I highly recommend going there some time. It is a really beautiful place. I have been going there since I was a baby, and it is hands down one of my favorite places. I took Friday off from work and headed down in the early afternoon to try to beat the traffic.

Once I got down there, the hunt for a place to eat began. The Cape has very few chain restaurants, so I really rely on Chris to pick out a place to eat, and he seems to gravitate towards ethnic food. He wanted to go to this Mexican place called Ay Caramba, but he thought it might have closed. So he did what any normal person would do - he went to the kitchen and pulled the phone book out of a drawer, and started flipping through it.

This is presented (mostly) without comment. When was the last time you used a hard copy of the phone book to look up anything?

In the end, we went to DiParma, mainly because I was really craving some pizza. It's a pretty nice restaurant. We even found a buy one get one free coupon for pizza in one of those little tourist guides, so that was kind of awesome. After dinner we went to the Sundae School (omg, amazing). I've only ever been to the Sundae School in Dennisport, but we ended up at the one in Harwichport this time, and they have a 30 minute limit on parking there, which is kind of silly, given how long the lines can get!

Afterwards we went back to Jackie's apartment and just hung out and chatted for a bit. Here's me and Jackie. I met Jackie about a year ago. I was at a fundraising thing that Chris had signed up for, and he had to go and work at the sign-in table. Jackie was the neighbor of the woman who was running the event, and the woman was also working the table, so she told Jackie just to go and sit with me. And thus a friendship was born!

The next morning Chris made pancakes for breakfast. I had suggested the night before that we go to the Pancake Man for breakfast, but these were probably better. This is how I eat my pancakes. Cut them up into bite-size pieces, and push them all to the edge of the plate. Then pour a bunch of syrup in the middle of the plate, and dip the pancake pieces in. This keeps the pancakes from getting all nasty and soggy. Someone else eats them like this, too, right??

We decided we would go kayaking. Normally we go to the beach, so this was a nice change of pace for us. We headed over to Chris's brother's house to get his kayak, and went and said hello to his brother's chickens.

We ended up using Chris's neighbor's kayak in the end though, because it was a 2-person kayak, and the two single kayaks wouldn't fit in the car. We took the kayak out on to the Bass River and paddled around for a few hours.

We saw a couple great blue herons standing around, and we saw one fly, too. We actually spent quite a bit of time bird watching. It was a really nice day on the river, and the birds were out everywhere. Here's a blurry picture of one of the herons.

Here's my view for the duration of the trip. The weather was really nice - sunny out, but not too hot, and the water was fairly calm.

There was this huge group of college-age kids on giant, inflatable kiddie toys floating up and down the river. There were probably at least 50 of them. We were rather intrigued by them, and Chris kept referring to them as the "flotilla". You can see them here in the background. We saw them on our way out, and passed them again on our way back.

After kayaking we headed back home and had lunch. Chris's dad was really keen to show us this newspaper advertisement. Looks like someone is trying to be all uppity in the Cape Cod Times! This is a legitimate half-page ad that some rich guy took out to brag about his daughter's marriage to the child of some other rich people. The ad goes into a lot of detail, and is really quite ridiculous.

This is Luna (I think?), my new kitty friend. She is Chris's brother's cat that his parents were watching for the time being. She was super cute!

After we were done with lunch, we decided to go out on the boat. (Yes, this is the same boat that almost brought about my, Chris's, and Marek's imminent demise last summer.) I even got to drive the boat, which was wicked exciting! We put in at Barnstable Harbor, and just drove around. We drove out to Mayflower Beach, and then came back.

This picture below isn't showing up too well on the computer, but a little group of clouds looked just like a shooting star.

We stopped for a bit at Sandy Neck Beach, and headed back into the dunes (or whatever they were).

If you went back behind the beach, there were this big, old ruin-y type things. Chris thinks they were from an old lighthouse.

While we were back there, a huge swarm of swallows came flying by. This picture is only a tiny bit of them, there were a lot more!

Some seagulls chilling on the beach. The one closest to me looked like he was contemplating something.

Afterwards, we drove back towards the harbor and went past it, and just dropped anchor and sat and chatted for awhile while the sun went down.

When we pulled back into the harbor, we drove around and looked at the boats. There was a lone cormorant sitting on top of pole.

Isn't it so pretty? These are my favorite pictures from the trip. I was sad to leave, but I'm sure we'll be back again soon!