Cape Cod

 31 July 2023 to 2 August 2023 - Portsmouth, RI to East Wareham MA

Stayed in the Cape Cod area for a few days.  Had beautiful weather for sightseeing, clear skies and low humidity. Visited the area the Pilgrims settled and took a scenic drive through Cape Cod all the way to Provincetown.  Totally miscalculated how long that would take and we got back to the campground very late.  But it was worth it.  A beautiful part of the country. On to Boston for 12 days.  Lots to see there.

Cape Cod is riddled with salt ponds and salt marshes.  This view is from the Salt Pond Visitor Center of the National Seashore.

The Plimoth Patuxet Living History Museum interprets how the Pilgrims probably lived. The indigenous people that inhabited the area and helped the Pilgrims to survive were represented also.

Volunteers dressed in period costume and mingled with the visitors, talking about what life is like in the village. One interesting factoid, the Pilgrims only dressed in black when they were dressing up for special events.  Otherwise, their clothes were dyed in reds, blues, yellows and browns.

The Pilgrims brought one builder, who only knew how to build homes like the ones in England.  Difficult to build and hard to maintain.  I found it amazing how ill-prepared the Pilgrims were for settling a wilderness. They brought no doctors, farmers or people whose trades would have helped them.  They were pretty much religious people who were textile factory workers.

There was a representation of a Wampanoag people's village.  If not for these people, the Pilgrims would have perished. This is a log hollowed out to become a boat.

This single-family dwelling was very similar to the one we saw up in New Paltz, NY last year.  The indigenous tribes up and down the East Coast traded and shared their technologies.

The captain of the militia conscripted some of the visitors to form a rag tag group.  He had them practice holding their "spears" and then took them on a march.  All had a good time.

Either I never learned this, or completely forgot, that the Pilgrims settled in an area that was an abandoned Wampanoag village.  It had been cleared for crops and was in a good position.  Just a few years earlier, a plague swept through the indigenous tribes in the East.  By the time the Pilgrims arrived, 70 percent of the indigenous had died. So, the people consolidated their resources and moved away, abandoning villages.

This volunteer demonstrated the method for creating walls in the homes.  This method worked well in a well-sealed and constructed wood home, but it pretty much failed in the ones the Pilgrims built.

Example of the inside of a home.

A Pilgrim scarecrow!!

They didn't have time for gardens that didn't produce food.  Corn, beans, and squash were common.

After several years, a fort was built to defend the villagers.  This was after reports of indigenous people attacks of other settlements.

The museum has a crafts center where volunteers demonstrate, among other skills, the art of pottery making.  These are all examples representing the technology of the time. The Pilgrims brought over potteries, but they had to learn to make pots and other clay objects for daily use.

The Mayflower II is a "replica" of the original Mayflower.  No one know exactly how the Mayflower looked but this one is based on writings of the time. I was struck by how small it was.

This was a sleeping bed.  People were small and the space was even smaller.  They were on this ship for ten weeks!

Living quarters for all on the ship. 102 people!  The ship was not built to transport people so there were no cabins.

Wow! I am mightily impressed that the Pilgrims could chisel the date in the rock that purportedly was the landing point.  No one knows if this rock played any role in the landing of the Pilgrims.  One passenger, very late in his life, remembered them disembarking at this rock. An impressive stone structure has been constructed over the rock. 

The DAR erected this fountain in recognition of the brave Pilgrim women.

I lost track of how many lighthouse we visited.  This was at Coast Guard Beach.

The National Seashore is absolutely beautiful!  Didn't see any wildlife - I was hoping for dolphins or even a great white shark sighting.  Cape Cod is the home of the largest number of great white sharks in the country.

Some of the many salt marshes.

The lighthouse at Nauset Beach.

The Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown is the tallest all-granite structure in the U.S. (252 feet). It was dedicated in 1910.

Two of the three sister light houses.  They are displayed in a park since the area they were originally placed eroded away.  Erosion is a big thing in Cape Cod, Soil is constantly being moved by ocean actions from one area to another.

Saw many turkey families all through Cape Cod.