I really didn’t spend much time in accommodations in Massachusetts, as I was skipping out on the Boston, but I did drive through quite a bit of the state during the daytime. It’s a pretty expensive state, which makes sense as it has the highest income per capita of any state, although quite a bit behind Washington DC. I wouldn’t have guessed New Jersey was #2 though!
Anyway, it would feel a lot more wealthy driving along the coasts where all the rich people have their houses. Although more like normal wealthy, not like oil baron wealthy like in Newport. I managed to pull myself out of bed early and start driving from Providence over to the southern part of the Cape. I didn’t have much of a plan, I figured I’d stop at the usual stuff, lighthouses, beaches, windmills. The first windmill I stopped at you had to drive a bit through a neighborhood to get there, and man these small coastal towns are just very idyllic, large all-white houses, perfectly manicured yards, lovely old trees overhanging the newly paved road, the sun poking its way through the branches, the smell of freshly fallen leaves. Like a movie scene. Very nice, the people are probably assholes though. I mean it’s not fair to live in a place like this and not have some irredeeming qualities to balance it out. Spellcheck is telling me irredeeming is not a word, well that’s news to me.
So anyway, I pulled in the tiny parking lot for the windmill, which is also has its own tiny sliver of beach. On both sides of that beach are “Private Beach” “No Trespassing” signs, which are a pretty common sight around these parts. Not much to see here, I took a photo and was on my way to the far southeast part of the cape, Chatham and the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge. Weird spot. I guess the the beach trail got swept away by erosion and now you’ve got to go through private property to get to the part with the trails. There is a road that goes through, but you can’t take it because rich people say no, so you’ve got to walk, and they’re very adamant about not going off the pathway. And there’s a ‘visitors center’ tent called Friends of Monomoy, which I’m not sure if it’s primary purpose is to give information or for the old retired people with all this time on their hands to keep watch on the tourist visitors. I didn’t spend much time here. I stopped for some chowda in the cute small town of Chatham.
Chatham Lighthouse
Chatham coastline
The rest of the afternoon I’d be driving along the Cape Cod National Seashore, which stretches all along the eastern side of the Cape, although you can’t actually drive along it as most of it is dunes and marshes and grasslands, so you have to keep going inland to the main road and then back out to the coast again at various points. It’s very pretty! And another perk of being in the off-season, non of these places charge entrance fees like they do in the summer, where a full day of beach hopping would get quite costly! During the drive the clouds moved in and the wind picked up giving it that moody type of vibe.
The whole far northeast part of the cape was very pleasant driving, as it seems to be mostly public land, not many houses and subdivisions around. Lots of different beaches, although they all start to look pretty similar at this point. The road through the Cape finally finishes at Provincetown, pop 3,709. That’s the year round population, the summer population swells to 60,000 according to wikipedia. It’s kind of an interesting town, it was known as an artists colony in the early 1900’s, and now has a reputation for being a very pro LGBTQ type of place. It’s also expensive as hell, I looked at room rates, as it’s a good 2+ hours to get back to Providence, but the hotel prices are crazy. I didn’t really have any time to do anything in Providencetown besides catch the sunset and eat some fish and chips, but it looked like a nice spot!