Massachusetts - Day 20 - southern Cape Cod

Sippewissett Campground

Thursday, 20 September 2018

today's route

Today being my birthday, I went looking for food to celebrate with.  I’d originally hoped to grill a steak, which I haven’t had since I left my brother’s wonderful cooking last February.  But the weather forecast held a moderate chance of rain so I decided against it.  Instead, I went on a quest for some decent bread, and some decent Parmesan, and some pate, to go with the champagne I’d already bought.  None of that was as easy as I thought it’d be.

I should have known what to expect when I tried to find champagne.  These days liquor stores seem to carry 2 or 3 brands that have actually seen France; the others – which have no business being labeled “champagne” but instead are correctly “sparkling wine” or some such – all came from somewhere else, mostly California.  Grrr.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to find how difficult it was to find some Parmesan, and I ended up with some that was made locally and wasn’t bad, but wasn’t what I’d hoped for.  At that same place – the Chatham Cheese Shop, in Chatham down the Cape – I got some locally made mousse/pate that, again, wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for.  Both it and the cheese seemed bland to me.

I’d had this impression that there were some fairly well-to-do people living on Cape Cod and that there’d be stores catering to some upscale tastes.  Maybe so, but I had trouble finding them.

What I did find was the southern part of Cape Cod.  It reminded me a little of Long Island NY, which I didn’t visit when I was in New York during May but I did visit 35 years ago.  I remember a lot of rural country and small farms and small towns.  Here I didn’t see much in the way of farms but I did see a lot of rural country and small towns.

The towns are all old, and the streets were all laid out for the transportation of another era, meaning they get clogged pretty easily in today’s traffic.  So I found lots of traffic.  It being a Thursday, I hadn’t expected the roads to be as crowded as they turned out to be.

Regarding the bread, I found some store-made bread at a market somewhere, and when I got to the cash register with that and a couple of tomatoes, the clerk told me I owed $25.23 or so.  I said some restrained version of HUH???  And she looked and showed me that the bread had been marked $22.55 and said it’d better be really good bread for that price.  And then she started laughing and showed it to the other clerk who laughed and then called back to the bakery, who told her that $2.55 was a more appropriate price.  Certainly glad I asked.

When I lived in Alaska I learned to gauge the character of a town on the number of liquor stores vs. the number of churches it had.  On that basis, I’d say Massachusetts in general and Cape Cod in particular rank right up there with Alaska: the numbers seem about even.  Lots of liquor stores here.

Very strong Irish influence all over the state, but I’m really noticing it here on the Cape.

I passed a business called the 1830 Sea Salt Co.  I looked them up later, hoping they offered tours (sadly, they don’t), and learned that, in the 1830s, there were 442 salt works on Cape Cod alone.  Next to fishing, it was the largest industry.  During the Revolutionary War, the British blockade made salt works a necessity.  Plus, the relatively easy salt production allowed fishermen to ship their product, salted as a preservative, world-wide.

Directions on Cape Cod seem to be very relative.  South Yarmouth is actually southeast of Yarmouth; West Yarmouth is southwest of South Yarmouth and thoroughly southwest of Yarmouth.  The only town on the Cape farther south than Falmouth is Woods Hole less than 5 miles away (probably why there’s no South Falmouth); East Falmouth is northeast, West Falmouth is north of Falmouth and west of East Falmouth, but North Falmouth is, indeed, north of them all.

There are lots of names from both Indian and early settler times: Quinaquisset Rd. near Meetinghouse Rd.  Stub Toe Rd.

By the time I’d found the Chatham Cheese Shop, I was tired from dealing with traffic all the way across the peninsula and still had to get back to the campground, so I took the “highway” which was a limited-access road so the traffic moved more quickly.  Plus, most of the traffic was coming back to the Cape, while I was heading west.

Tonight, I’ll be watching a really great movie called “Denial.”  It’s a British film about an actual libel suit brought by a Holocaust denier; Anna and David sent it to me, wonderful family that they are.

As birthdays go, this has been a good one.