We awoke to another foggy morning, which seems to be typical this time of year. After a leisurely early morning, we decided to take another hike and we chose the White Cedar Swamp Trail near Marconi Beach. I think we have taken this walk before, but none of us could remember.
We drove over to the Marconi Site area, which is where Guglielmo Marconi built his transmission tower in 1903 to send the first wireless Transatlantic radio signal between the U.S. and Europe. Although he had done this from Newfoundland a year earlier, this location was the first transmission from the U.S. We also learned that this transmitting station was instrumental during the Titanic disaster as it was from here the radio message was sent to the Carpathian ship that was able to sail to the Titanic site and save those who could be saved. There is nothing remaining of the transmitting station because the sea has claimed the dunes on which it was built.
The hiking trail nearby was about a mile-and-a-quarter through lovely scrub pines and oaks and then through a swamp where white cedar trees still remain. The fog had cleared and it was an absolutely perfect day to be walking through the woods. The temperature was about 60, about 10-12 degrees cooler than it has been during the daytime all week long, but it was just right for our hike.
We met a couple with a young baby along the way and we exchanged photo ops. The couple was from London, which perked Christine up because our daughter Eve is in London.
Once out of the swamp, the trail goes back uphill through more lovely woods. On our way up the trail we were overtaken by two women on horseback. What a nice sight and sound, hearing the horses’ hooves.
We really enjoyed this walk. It was peaceful and lovely.
We then decided to check out Marconi Beach, just a short drive from the trail. If it looked good, we would come back for a little beaching after lunch. As we drove into the parking lot, we noticed 4 school buses, so we knew there would be lots of kids on the beach. What we saw was a lot of busy activity. There were about 12 or so groups of kids, maybe 12 kids to each team, and they were strung out along the beach creating sculptures out of sand. It was kind of fun watching all the hustle and bustle of the kids in motion.
We decided that we would come back to Marconi Beach after lunch to see what the sculptures were. Besides, it was a beautiful beach and it was our last afternoon and we HAD to be on the beach.
Back at Marconi after lunch, we descended the many steps to the sand and set ourselves up. I said earlier that it was 60 degrees during our walk, and that was still the temp during the afternoon. It was quite chilly with the wind.
We couldn’t tell what the overall theme of the sand sculptures were, but probably something to do with current events. Some of the teams did a fabulous job with detail work.
Whatever the project, the kids worked hard and were quite accomplished in creating their various sand sculptures.
I wanted so badly to get into the waves since we didn’t see many seals and no shark fins. I tried, but with the cooler temperature, the wind, and the heavy surf dragging lots of stones across the beach with each wave, hitting my feet, I never made it past my waist. But I got splashed all over sufficiently to get myself wet, and cold. It was all good, as Reva says.
Sadly, we came to the end of our beach afternoon and went back to the house for our final dinner. Afterwards, we all began cleaning up and getting ready for our departure Saturday morning.
Saturday, we left right around 9:00 a.m. Our Cape Code vacation came to an end. The weather finally turned, and we had some rain. That makes it easier to leave a beach vacation. We all felt so blessed to have had such wonderful weather during the week. Six beach days in a row!
We had an uneventful drive home and got to our house at about 4:00 p.m. I think it was a wonderful week and we’re happy to have been with Reva and Jo on Cape of the Cod, as Jo calls it. They are great friends with whom we have good rapport. Hard to find such wonderful friends. We are blessed.
I don’t know what our next adventure will be, but when we do have one, I’ll blog about it. Thanks for reading this!