Cape Cod

Thursday, October 29, 2009

In the breakfast room at our Best Western motel we met a family from Moraga, CA. They had a boy who wondered if we had seen him at the airport, when he heard that we were from San Mateo. Cute!

We wanted to explore Cape Cod but somehow we missed the Visitor Center and the next one was closed. We checked out the Sandwich Glass Museum and Glassworks. It was one of the largest glass factories in the US during the 19th but it went out of business because the material to make glass was too expensive. The workers went on strike for higher wages and the factory never reopened. Sad, as their glass work was very nice.
In the museum in the women's restroom, you could see a shelf with a glass baby bottle, a breast pump, and glass breast shields. Can you imagine wearing glass breast shields?

Afterwards we found a tea house, so we had lunch. A group of women in their 60-70's were having lunch together - their weekly tea per Jalil! Next door there was a building that looked like a church but the sign said BISTRO INN. We later learned that a lot of church buildings are not used as churches any more, as people are not going to church like they used to.

We now drove towards the tip of Cape Cod on the road that was more scenic, supposedly. But it was very slow. We saw many old cemeteries, clapboard houses painted on the street side only - mostly white or natural - rock walls or picket fences.

We found Highland Lighthouse but the museum was closed. We could walk to where we could look out over the ocean. It was now getting late so we pushed to get to the end while we could still see. We did find one more lighthouse - RACE POINT LIGHT near Provincetown. This town was really quaint and I would have liked to spend some time there but it was now dark. The first lighthouse was erected in 1816 there. Cape Cod has had more than twenty lighthouses operating along its shores over the past 200years.

Provincetown was the site where the pilgrims first landed - before they moved to Plymouth. There is a pilgrim monument to honor the landing of the Mayflower on a high pillar.

On the way home we took the fast road, which I wish we had done first so that we would have seen more at the end of Cape Cod. That is the problem with not doing your homework.