The most dramatic of juxtapositions is where land meets sea, such as at a cliff, on headlands, at a beach, or just along an expanse of flat land on the water. I think of the view out to sea from the headlands at Land’s End (2001/2) in Cornwall in SW England, and also at Cabo São Vicente / Cape Saint Vincent (2005/15) in SW Portugal; Skagen, the northernmost point in Denmark; traveling along the Florida Keys to Key West (2008/6); South Point on Hawai’i; the California coast, particularly the cliffs in Mendocino (2008/19); the cliffs at Peggy’s Cove south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where one is admonished to “Savour the Sea”. And then there’s Cape Cod.

Cape Cod   Cape Cod has much if not all of those features, as well as whitewashed fishing villages, sand dunes, salt marshes, and sea grasses. It also has reams of history, and the unusual geography of its peninsula that swirls around itself while it reaches out into the Atlantic. Commenting on this unique location’s orientation eastward into the ocean, Thoreau said “There was nothing but that savage ocean between us and Europe”. Then, as to the other direction westward across the Bay he said “A man may stand there and put all America behind him.”

Henry David Thoreau, the author, naturalist, historian, and philosopher, who relished simple living in natural surroundings, became increasingly fascinated with natural history and narratives of travel and expeditions, particularly admiring Darwin and his “Voyage of the Beagle” (2009/15). He lived in Concord, in the Boston area, and this, his native state of Massachusetts included Cape Cod, which Thoreau visited four times between 1849 and 1857. Given his love of natural surroundings, it’s understandable that he wrote about Cape Cod: “The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-travelled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.”

Both my earlier visits to the Cape had been fleeting. In early July 1969, as part of our epic grand tour of the East, Beverly and I stopped for only two nights. We made all the obligatory stops, such as at the Kennedy Memorial in Hyannis. Our second trip, although again for only two nights, was more memorable, both for being in the fall and for squeezing a rare weekend getaway out of our work schedule. In early October 1975 we left work on a Friday with packed bags and got to the Cape in four hours. We only had a day and a half, leaving late Sunday, but again went all around the Cape. I remember very clearly stopping at a cranberry bog in that crisp autumn weather and picking a handful of bright red cranberries, which Beverly made into muffins at home that just seemed to taste better because we’d hand-picked the cranberries, and on Cape Cod at that. I also remember walking along a path through sea grasses in the Cape Cod National Seashore with beautiful sunny, but brisk, views out into the Atlantic and with the exhilarating sea air. I find that Thoreau made this comment about the seasons on Cape Cod:

And also this further comment about the landscape at that time of year:

My trip to the Cape this year was to be in mid-September, just a bit earlier than that last visit in early October, with similar shoulder-season weather and no summer crowds. We had driven the two previous times, as most people do nowadays, but I didn’t want to come by car. I could always rent a car for a day tour while I’m there, but even in the shoulder season, I didn’t want to get involved with the numerous horror stories of traffic.

The communities on the calmer Bay side of the Upper and Mid Cape have their kind of quiet charm. If Provincetown at the tip of the Cape is at the one o’clock position, and Plymouth (1620) in the west is at ten o’clock, Sandwich, the oldest town on the Cape proper (settled 1637, incorporated 1639) is at seven and is a favorite of mine. The towns on south shore have their own charm as well, and my favorite is Chatham (settled 1665, incorporated 1712) at the outer “elbow” of the Cape.

Provincetown   But there was no doubt in my mind I wanted to spend my first lengthier stay on the Cape in Provincetown, a name often shortened to P-town. That’s the more common punctuation, but it’s also punctuated P’town, which I prefer, since it’s more usual elsewhere, such as in B’klyn or S’hampton. Why Provincetown? I have always liked the thrill of going to the outermost point of a location, as in Land’s End, Cape Saint Vincent, Skagen, Key West. Medieval geographers would denote such a farthest point, or the limit of any journey, as an ultima Thule. I suppose seeking an ultima Thule is one thing I have a passion for. On Cape Cod, the land ends at Provincetown, so what better ultima Thule could one want?

Beyond that is all the history concentrated in P’town, which wasn’t incorporated until 1727, although it had been harboring ships for more than a century, since the landing of the “Pilgrims”. Furthermore, everyone who goes there knowledgeably goes for the diversity. “Diversity” is the code word in common usage and in all seriousness to describe the acceptance in P’town of diverse ways of life. It’s a place both gays and straights can feel comfortable, and is almost as sophisticated as any large city with its arts festivals and quality restaurants, all in a village motif in a swirling curlicue of a location. All in all, I would say that, despite the charm of the other towns, P’town is the icing on the cake that is Cape Cod.

So how to get to P’town? Well, let’s first go back in time. Originally, there was a choice of sailing from Boston, or otherwise a long stagecoach ride. But railroads had been expanding in the 1830’s and a line reached from South Boston to Plymouth in 1845. The first extension to the Cape proper reached Sandwich in 1848. Since Thoreau’s first trip to the Cape was the next year, 1849, he was apparently an early passenger on the spectacular new and convenient way to travel, as far as it went:

Well, if contemporary car drivers have to put up with traffic jams, riding on sand roads in a narrow coach where you had to breathe in to close the doors didn’t seem the most enjoyable, either. The railroad was much preferred, and it was extended in stages (no pun intended) across the Cape, reaching Hyannis on the south shore in 1854 and Orleans, on the swing north just past the “elbow” at the beginning of the Outer Cape in 1865. But this final extension didn’t happen in Thoreau’s lifetime (he died in 1862). On later visits, he did take the coach as far as Orleans, but being a man of nature, he walked the rest of the way, and repeatedly, at that: I have spent, in all, about three weeks on the Cape; walked from Eastham to Provincetown twice on the Atlantic side, and once on the Bay side also, excepting four or five miles, and crossed the Cape half a dozen times on my way...

Eastham is the next town north after Orleans and is some 30 km (18 mi) from Provincetown. And this is what he enjoyed along the way on the ever-narrowing peninsula as he walked north: In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers.

Finally, and with great fanfare, the railroad reached Provincetown on 23 July 1873. For the first time, people could travel comfortably from Boston to Provincetown in about five hours, and not worry about rough seas or narrow coaches. This is an 1888 map of what was then named the Old Colony Railroad.

Notice the thick network of rail service in southeastern Massachusetts. Well, the name of the Old Colony Railroad does seem to refer back in time to Plymouth Colony, does it not? On the Cape there are connections to Wood’s Hole, Hyannis, and Chatham, all en route to Provincetown. And it’s all gone. As rail ridership declined in the mid 20C, service was reduced, and the last passenger service on Cape Cod was in 1959. Tracks still exist in the Upper Cape, but north of Orleans, the rail route is now a bicycle trail. (Is there irony here, people-powered bicycling where Thoreau liked to walk?) It’s a well-liked and well-used trail, but given the traffic jams in the summer on Route 6, the backbone highway down the center of the Cape, rail service could offer considerable relief. At least a return to common sense has gradually been coming about. Rail lines in the Boston area have been reopened, and are being extended back down toward the Cape. It’s hoped that a commuter line from Hyannis to Boston might be a possibility. But that will not affect P’town, where the line even extended beyond the station at Bradford and Center Streets (193 km [120 mi] from Boston) onto the former steamboat wharf for connecting service by ship. It’s gone, all gone.

Acela & Catamaran   But I still decided to go by rail. In mid-September I left for a week’s trip starting on the high-speed Acela to Boston, then the catamaran ferry, and I’ve been very pleased with the route I put together. The Acela has both Business Class and First Class, and some time I have to try Business Class, but the fee for First on this train is not unreasonable, and I enjoy it. The best connections for me involved getting an early start at 6:00, and I made my way to Pennsylvania Station and its Acela Lounge, a quiet place for First Class passengers to wait, with complimentary pastries and coffee, also soft drinks. When the Acela pulled in from Washington we went down to board it, and it left for Boston at 8:03. Hot meals are included, as are all beverages, and, despite the early hour in this direction, I enjoyed a Bloody Mary, and afterward, a Bailey’s. Newspapers are included, and I had my own table with an outlet for the laptop, and I got some writing accomplished. The high-speed Acela is unfortunately not high-speed by European, Japanese, or other standards, since it doesn’t run on its own right-of-way and has to go slower than in other countries, but as the US slowly matures into a proper railroading society again, it’s the best we’ve got. We stopped only in Stamford, New Haven, and Providence, plus three stops in Boston: suburban Westwood-Route 128, Back Bay Station, and South Station.

The weather was gorgeous, as was the entire week at the Cape, except for two sprinkles the day I rented the car. The restored South Station is a pleasure to arrive at. I had to laugh at two large liquor ads inside the station for Maker’s Mark, which celebrated the Boston accent. One announced “Makah’s Maahk”, and the other said “In Bettah Baahs Everywhere”. The reader can best imitate saying Mark that way by saying, Mack, but holding the A; for Bars, say Jazz, then change the J to a B. Keep it up and in no time you’ll be ready to Pack Cazz.

It was about a fifteen-minute walk away from downtown to where the catamaran ferry left from. After a wait, the Provincetown III pulled in on its inbound trip (several trips a day, only in season), and we boarded for the 90-minute crossing. It went slower through Boston harbor, then sped up as it raised itself on its hydrofoils across Massachusetts Bay.

The unique geography of the Cape and especially its tip became apparent as we approached from the northwest in what turned out to be a figure-6 pattern. From some distance out, the low lying land became visible, and the landmark Pilgrim Tower rose above everything, but partially blocked by the Cape in the foreground turning in on itself. First we saw the beaches, then went around Race Point, and continued our spiral, passing around the distinctive Long Point. We turned so much that by now we were already facing back toward Boston as we manoeuvred around the stone breakwater into P’town, which spread out in both directions on both sides of MacMillan Wharf. It was a most invigorating way to arrive.

P’town is perhaps the most linear town I know. It spreads out left and right to the West End, where there is a Pilgrims’ Landing monument in a park in a rotary, and to the East End. There are really only two east-west streets; up front is the famous Commercial Street, narrow and one-way inbound. It’s as close to a pedestrian street as you’d want (and should be made one), since very little traffic struggles by. In the center of town it really is commercial, and toward the West End and East End it’s surprisingly residential. A short block behind Commercial street is two-way Bradford Street, which is also US 6A. It’s even more residential. Another longish block inland is Route 6, but it’s a wide parkway running the length of town, and not strictly a city street. Beyond this are the dunes in what is known as the Province Lands. This is the entire layout of the town, whose year-round population is now about 3400, and declining. However, it’s estimated that in the summer, the population rises to some 60,000.

There are two interesting phases in the development of the town. From the early years on, everything revolved around the harbor, and in the 18C P’town became the third largest whaling port in New England after Nantucket and New Bedford. Even today, visitors regularly go whale-watching. By the mid-19C there were some 75 wharves in town. A major ethnic development was the arrival of Portuguese fisherman from the Azores--knowing the role of cod in Portuguese cuisine, can one doubt that they would come to the cape named after that fish? Portuguese family names are everywhere, and there’s a Portuguese bakery on Commercial Street. Every restaurant has their variation of “Portuguese soup”, and most also serve linguiça, the Portuguese pork sausage.

By the early 20C, much of that way of life had declined, and to fill the vacuum in the dying town came the art and literary community to vacation. Some of the most famous names in literature came, and many did some of their major work here, Eugene O’Neill, Sinclair Lewis, Tennessee Williams, and Norman Mailer among them. The Provincetown Playhouse was a major theater, and to this day there are many art galleries on Commercial Street, and as I was leaving, people were starting to arrive for the Tennessee Williams Festival at the end of September. With the art community came the blend of gays and straights, and the diversity for which P’town is known today.

Although there are a lot of fancy bed-and-breakfasts in historic houses, I had found online a small inn that I thought would fit my needs in the center of town on Conwell Street just north of Bradford Street, Dexter’s Inn. It was secluded, and had a nice sun deck and garden. Its lounge, which was called the Keeping Room, an old New England name, is where breakfast was served, plus late afternoon sherry.

On my arrival day I walked up from the wharf and settled in, and spent the rest of the afternoon walking considerable distances up and down Commercial Street, soaking in the atmosphere and checking out the list I’d prepared of potential restaurants, always a major interest.

Late morning of my first full day friends Art and Jeannine, who were up from Florida and also visiting the Cape, came by for a visit from where they were staying mid-Cape. Art and I spent quite some time discussing Eden Bay business, before we went to lunch. This visit was, I believe, only the second time I’d ever had a planned get-together during a trip with another traveler, the first time being with Tim Littler in Minneapolis exactly two years earlier (2007/13).

Pilgrim Monument   The rest of that day I visited the only imposing structure in town, the so-called Pilgrim Monument, just a few blocks away on a rise in town. It was finished in 1910 in the style of an Italian Renaissance bell tower, like one in Siena. At 77 m (252.5 ft) it’s the tallest granite structure in the US, and is by far the highest point on Cape Cod, although, given the flatness of the land, a much lower building could have had that record. Given that this was the first landfall, but that the settlers didn’t actually establish themselves here, the real significance is of the Mayflower Compact signed in the harbor; this is the subject of a major bas-relief at the town-side base of the hill. At the base of the tower itself is a local history museum. One of the dioramas shows a washday scene, with boiling pots of laundry over fires. I suppose staying on the Mayflower for all those weeks but not settling on the land until they reached Plymouth, to put it in contemporary terms, was a little like living out of a van, doing chores outside if possible, and moving around until you finally find a campsite you like.

In all honesty, I’d totally forgotten that I’d climbed the tower before with Beverly on our first trip in 1969, except that I found where it said so in our travel diary. But that was a lifetime ago, and I had to see it again. Or, put another way, I celebrated the 40th anniversary of that tower visit by doing my second ascent.

The square structure is really quite attractive and imposing. There is no elevator, but it’s not only steps, either. As you ascend up the square interior, you mostly walk up ramps, of which there are 60, connected by 116 stairs.

But the view from the windy top is superb. From the front of the monument, you look directly down on the roofs of Provincetown with the harbor just beyond, followed by Long Point reaching around, and in the far distance across the Bay, you can make out Plymouth. Moving to the right to the next side, beyond Race Point you’re supposed to be able to see Boston on the clearest of days, but not today. The back view is impressive for the sand dunes and the miniscule airport, with the Atlantic beyond. Actually, I thought the fourth view was the most interesting, since you look south along the slender part of the Cape with water on both sides, the stretch Thoreau walked.

Tour by Car   I’d allowed for one more day looking around before spending the rest of the week writing, reading, talking to people, and dining. On this day I’d rented a car to tour all around the Cape. I started with the Backside, driving around the road through the dunes. Actually, the impressive dunes are a long-ago ecological disaster. When the European settlers arrived, the entire area was forested, but succumbed to the need for wood. Once denuded, the forest never reestablished itself. The dunes are impressive, but can be hazardous. Drivers on Route 6 are warned to avoid it in seriously windy weather, since a shifting dune can cover over the road.

Driving south, I stopped on the Bay side in Eastham to visit again the First Encounter Beach, where the settlers and natives of the Nauset tribe came across each other on 8 December 1620 and sized each other up. A plaque on the edge of the beach duly records the event. Nearby, on the Atlantic side, a stop at Marconi Station is always worthwhile. The view from the bluff of the ocean is always impressive, as well as a stroll along the paths through the beach grasses near Marconi Beach. But the raison d’être of the location, and its name, is that it was the site established by the Italian radiotelegraph inventor Guglielmo Marconi for a broadcasting relay station to Europe in 1902 (think of Thoreau’s contemplating the same distance across the sea). A successful message was sent by the US President to the British King in 1903, the station received distress calls from the Titanic in 1912, and news and telegrams were sent to the Lusitania before its sinking in 1915. But technology changed and better facilities were built elsewhere, so the station was closed in 1917 and dismantled in 1920. Of the four relay towers that stood there (shown in a model), the foundations of only two can be seen today, since the other two succumbed to erosion of the hillside by the Atlantic over the years.

I drove down to Chatham, at the “elbow”, stopping first at the magnificent ocean view at the lighthouse, then driving down the quaint center of the bustling town. I ended at the restored, Victorian Chatham rail station, maintained by volunteers, but sadly with no rails in sight.

At this point, as I cut diagonally across the Cape toward Sandwich, I decided on the spur of the moment to go off-Cape via the Sagamore Bridge to Plymouth, which was only a half-hour beyond the Canal. South of town, I passed by Plimoth Plantation, which we had visited in 1969. While Williamsburg in Virginia is a restoration of the center of that city, Plimoth Plantation is merely a replica of what the center of the Plymouth would have looked like in 1627, and is worth the visit. They use the spelling of the city name that was used in the journals of the time. A bit beyond is the pleasant contemporary city, whose center is very “Victorian commercial”. Down the hill near the harbor is a historic park, where the replica of the Mayflower is docked. It (and the similar ships of the era, such as the Halve Maen) strikes one as so tiny to have crossed the ocean. It can’t be more than two bus-lengths long. Nearby, in the same park on the harbor, is the portico housing the so-called Plymouth Rock, famous for being famous, and with little actual historical value.

On the way back, I toured the Cape Cod Canal, driving down one side, then over the other vehicular bridge, the Bourne Bridge (there’s also a rail bridge in sight beyond that), and then back up the other side to Sandwich, a charming New England town. Sandwich was famous in the 19C for Sandwich glass, utilitarian glass items in very pale colors, which today are collector’s items. In 1975 we visited the Sandwich Glass Museum, which I just passed by on this trip along the Bay. All in all, on this day I drove 328 km (204 mi), mostly just touring for nine hours, and every minute was worth it.