Here are a couple more photos of our house. We really like being here and the back deck is the best part. It gets the morning sun and is a great spot for starting our day. We got smart and started bringing in the chairs and hammock at night so we had dry chairs for the morning. Most nights it is very foggy and damp and everything on the deck gets soaking wet.
This is the way Reva starts her day.
The first activity today was to drive into P-town to buy an Ethernet cable for Christine. At the house, while we have a good internet connection and all of us can access it via WiFi, Christine’s WiFi isn’t functioning. The way her computer is set up with lots of virtual machines and a bridge network, she can’t access her work stuff effectively without being able to get to her virtual machines (I know, geek talk). I thought that part of the problem related to needing to be connected to a network from a modem and then her laptop’s bridge network would work. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a cable.
We drove to the Conwell Home Center, a very nice, large for the area, all-purpose hardware store that has a big electronics section. Christine found exactly what she needed. We then drove down Commercial Street just to take in the sights. It’s fun to be in P-town and later in the week we’ll do it up right and spend a few hours walking around. For now, we just settled for a quick tour and reminiscing about things we’ve done and places that are still there and those that are no longer. We all oohed and aahed driving into P-town along Pilgrim Lake. The dunes around there are so beautiful. Also out to the Herring Cove beach area is a wonderful sight with the dunes and marshes.
Back at the house, Christine tried out the new Ethernet card and voila, it got the job done for her to be able to access her virtual machines. Phew! We had lunch on the deck and then got ready for a beach afternoon.
Today we wanted to go to an Atlantic side beach. We had a plan to check out the 4 nearest Atlantic beaches and see if any looked good. The first was Newcomb Hollow beach, and we needed to go no further. This was a wonderful beach. The dune hill down to the beach was very doable. But, what was so interesting is that while it was bright blue sky and sunny driving to the beach, once there the Atlantic beach was socked in by fog. The visibility was pretty poor. The waves were big and the surfers were having a great time. There’s been a high surf advisory here all week due to the hurricanes, Irma and Marie. Had the water been just a little warmer, I would have been out jumping the waves, but the water was just too cold.
The beach was really nice, very wide and bordered by high dunes. Right now, the tide is high in the mid-to-late afternoon and we had to move back from our initial spot as the tide moved closer and closer.
Reva wanted to see seals. In the fall, apparently grey seals come to the area and at low tide, they apparently come out of the water on to the beach to get warm in the sun. We did see a couple of heads pop up out of the water just off shore. Christine also saw either an ocean sunfish or great white shark dorsal fin bob up and down as it swam parallel to the shore. Reva and Jo talked with a marine biologist who specializes in whales as she was walking along the beach. She was looking for an ocean sunfish which someone reported needed to be rescued. The funny part of the story is that Krill, the biologist’s name, spotted JoAnn’s shirt, which had fish patterns all over it, and said she wanted her shirt. Naturally, giver that she is, Jo literally took the shirt off her back and gave it to Krill. Krill told Jo to email her at the New England Basking Shark and Ocean Sunfish Project and she’d mail her one of their T-shirts. She validated that Christine could have seen either the sunfish or shark and she gave us information about the seals.
After our beach afternoon, we returned to the house, rested a bit, and got cleaned up for dinner. We had made plans to meet our friend Ellen and either one or both of her girls for dinner halfway between Wellfleet and Plymouth. This was about a 45 minute drive for each of us. Ellen’s wife Mary died 3 years ago, which was an awful event. Christine and I met them in 1995 and have had visited with them, or they us, over the years. Stephanie and Savanna are the girls, who were adopted by Ellen and Mary out of the foster care program. The girls are now 22 and 19.
We met Ellen and Savanna at the Marshside Restaurant in Dennis. It was a beautiful place and the seating area looked out over a stunning marsh around the Sesuit Creek looking towards Sesuit Harbor.
It was great seeing Ellen and Savanna. Savanna has certainly changed and is now a very talkative, happier-appearing young woman. She was really on a roll at dinner and entertained all of us. Reva and Jo interacted with her in a playful way, as they do with kids. Ellen is now working in a pet sitting service coordinating 26 staff and over 700 clients. She still does massage part time. It’s been a difficult time for her since Mary’s death and all our hearts go out to heart. None of us can even imagine how hard it has been.
We had a nice time at the Marshside with Ellen and Savanna and I’m glad it worked out being able to get together. For Christine and me, a trip to the Cape has always meant visiting with Ellen and Mary and the girls, and I hope that continues for a long time.