Cape Cod Trip, Part Five: One last batch of randomness

Just a few more pictures from the trip.

First, Java on our last night there. I love this picture: he looks like a puppy, doesn't he?

Second, the perfect church for Vogel. Please note the sign. And of course it's a Unitarian Universalist Church.

Third, a picture from our trip home. I was trying to sleep a bit (something I never do on roadtrips, since I like to entertain/talk to the driver), when Vogel woke me up by saying, "Heidi, I know you are trying to sleep, but you need to see this." Yes--two camels were in front of us. "You wouldn't have wanted to miss that, right?" she said. She knows me very well.

Cape Cod Trip, Part Four: Sunsets

By now, faithful readers know I am sucker for pretty sunsets. Cape Cod (and specifically the view from Vogel's parents' house) never let me down.

Cape Cod Trip, Part Three: Visiting Rita

One evening, Vogel and I drove over to Plymouth to meet Rita, who lives outside Boston, and is, as I've noted earlier, expecting a little girl in late September.


Vogel and I had a bit of time to kill before Rita joined us, so Vogel did her best impression of a lobster.


After dinner at the Cabby Shack (which was pretty yummy despite an awful cover band playing in the backgroud), we took a walk along the water and ended up down by the Mayflower 2. You can see the back of it here.


Once again, we were blessed with beautiful weather, and I took some nice shots of the boats on the water.



Another picture of the boats and sky.


A friendly woman volunteered to take this picture of the three of us. I think we look pretty cute in it. And check out that pregnant belly Rita's sportin'! By the way, we couldn't get to Plymouth Rock (it was closed for construction around it), so we pretended that the rock we were sitting on was Plymouth Rock.

After some more walking and some delicious ice-cream, we said good-bye. It was awesome to see Rita and have the three of us together again, if a bit bittersweet since she lives so far away these days. It was also great to see her before the baby comes, but again, kind of bittersweet since we won't be there when she is born and all that. At least she's not all the way in Azerbaijan, like some of my friends, but it's still tough.

Cape Cod Trip, Part Two: Breakfast at the airport...

Like I said above, I didn't take all that many photos this time, but I did snap some good ones one morning at breakfast. We went to this little restaurant out by a small airport (where those little private planes take off and land). It was pretty cool to watch them take off and land, especially since the day was sunny and clear.

The restaurant is on the second floor of the building. The planes and runway are directly opposite the building.


A shot of the planes parked.

A plane taking off.


Another take off.

A good breakfast with a free show! Hard to ask for more bang for your buck!

Cape Cod Trip, Part One: The Drive

Just like last year, Vogel and I took a trip up to Cape Cod. (I apologize for taking so long to post the photos--the trip was early/mid July.) I also didn't take all that many pictures this time. But there are a few good ones worth sharing.

So, just like last year, let's get started with some photos from the drive up there.


Just like last year, Java Bean was our companion.

Here's the second one we took. Vogel liked the slogan on the back of this truck. I did, too, until she kept talking about it and said, "That good advice for the bedroom, too." I called foul on that bit of over-sharing.

Next, the back view of a car that spent entirely too much time ahead of us. Creepy.

Just as we got on the NJ Turnpike we found ourselves stuck in some traffic, giving us plenty of time to spot this biker. He/she was a bad-ass--completely with an actual bad ass. Check out the skull on his/her butt cheek!

Another view of the biker.


This made us giggle. No explanation necessary, right?

Last Cape Cod Post

There weren't many things I didn't like about our trip to Cape Cod, as you can probably tell by the tone of my posts below. But my favorite thing about the trip didn't really involve doing much of anything at all. What I really enjoyed, you see, was simply relaxing on Vogel's parents' back deck overlooking the water. The view was amazing and sitting out there made me feel so relaxed and peaceful. I spent hours on that deck reading, working on my syllabi, or just watching the boats and fishermen out in the water. Part of what makes the view so amazing is that you can see the old Stage Harbor Lighthouse, now inoperative, but still quite pretty. I do regret not getting a picture of at least one sunset, but you'll have to trust me when I tell you that they were gorgeous.

First, a shot of the back of the house, so you can get an idea of what the deck was like (and the house itself--really a lovely space, open and airy). On the far left of the picture, you can see the largest part of the deck, off the side of the house. This is where I did most of my watching and working. (And yes, I did work on vacation, but that made me happy. I don't mind doing my work most of the time, vacation or no vacation. Too bad so much of that work may be gone with the broken laptop, but that's another story...)



Now some views from the deck:



Everyone loved spending time out there, even Java!



This might be my favorite shot from the whole trip, as I feel it just sums up the whole vibe of the vacation.



In the end, this is the vacation I needed--a time and place to relax, collect my thoughts, and gear up for the coming year, one that promises to be full of excitement, work, and change.

Birthday Dinner

As some of you know, one of my best Greensboro friends, Rita, just moved from GSO to Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where she'll be teaching at Massasoit Community College. Rita actually moved into her new apartment on Sunday, August 5, and then drove almost two hours on Monday, August 6, to meet up with Vogel and I in Chatham. How's that for a sign of devotion from a friend? She rocks.

On Monday night, Rita and Vogel also took me to dinner to celebrate my birthday a bit early. We went to this really lovely restaurant called the Cape Sea Grille. The food was awesome and the ambiance was quite nice as well--quiet and relaxed. Everyone loved what they ordered. Rita and Vogel got seafood (salmon and bass, I think) and I got this delicious summer vegetable stew. (If I were Amber, I would have taken lots of pretty shots of the food, but I'll leave that niche to her). Afterwards, we drove back to Chatham and got ice-cream. Not a bad way to spend an evening.

Provincetown

To reward myself for having completed two of my four syllabi (and remember, the other two might also be done, if they can be saved from my broken computer's hard drive), I am doing yet another post today.

On the same day that we visited the Highland Lighthouse, we also drove to Provincetown, a truly unique place that you can read more about here. I've never been there before, but Vogel had been several times for writer's workshops and other reasons, and assured me it is a great place for the arts, shopping, restaurants, and people watching. Now, of course, a large reason for all of that is because it is also a very gay-friendly town--sort of a gay mecca on the East Coast.

Vogel was right (as usual) and there were lots of cool things to see. I actually didn't take all that many pictures, but a do a have few choice ones to share.

The first is one Vogel insisted on taking of a little chihuahua wearing shades. The owner was only too happy to force the dog to pose for us, although the dog didn't seem to like it very much. Dogs (especially little dogs--go figure!) were everywhere in this town, and Vogel, being the dog-lover, kept stopping in her tracks so she could "ohh" and "ahh" over them. Pretty funny stuff.



Here's a funny coda to the chihuahua story: about an hour after we took this photo, as we were walking back to the car, we ran into the same dog and owner again, this time in a different spot, and this time the dog was wearing a different accessory--a pink baseball hat. Poor chihuahua--it seems her desires come second to her owner's desire to draw attention to herself by posing her all around town with different props.

As I mentioned above, since Provincetown draws so many artists, you don't have to look far for interesting sights. This one house had a beautiful garden with an eclectic collection of statues and sculptures that Vogel asked me to photograph. I think the statue is kind of scary, but I tend to get scared pretty easily by things like this.



You can also find "art" on the store-fronts on the main street in town. Vogel made me photograph one sign with a particularly catchy name. "Take a picture for David!" she said. That request is all kinds of hilarious.



You gotta love that the small print says "A FINE JEWELRY STORE." Awesome. I hope these three pictures give you a good idea of the town--I think they are pretty representative of its spirit--funky, risqué, artsy, and fun.

Highland Lighthouse

Because Vogel was bound and determined to keep me sufficiently entertained on our trip, she came up with the idea of visiting the Highland Lighthouse, also called the Cape Cod Lighthouse or the North Truro Lighthouse. She read in a guidebook that this spot was one of Thoreau's favorites, and since she knows how much I love Thoreau, she thought (correctly) that it would be right up my alley.

Thoreau visited the lighthouse several times in the 1850s, and wrote of his visit in Cape Cod. Here's just an excerpt I've lifted from this page about the lighthouse:

"The keeper entertained us handsomely in his solitary little ocean house. He was a man of singular patience and intelligence, who, when our queries struck him, rang as clear as a bell in response. The light-house lamp a few feet distant shone full into my chamber, and made it bright as day, so I knew exactly how the Highland Light bore all that night, and I was in no danger of being wrecked... I thought as I lay there, half-awake and half-asleep, looking upward through the window at the lights above my head, how many sleepless eyes from far out on the ocean stream -- mariners of all nations spinning their yarns through the various watches of the night -- were directed toward my couch."

The nerdy nineteenth-century scholar in me got a real kick out of seeing the same view Thoreau saw and imagining him sleeping in the keeper's house. [If you're interested, you can read the entire chapter here.] The admission fee to climb to the top wasn't too bad ($4 a person). I also got a kick out of the guides--men in their 50s and 60s who were completely in love with that lighthouse. Maybe this could be a post-retirement job for my dad! Vogel and I asked them a couple of questions, and they were tripping over each other to answer us and show off which one of them had superior Highland Light knowledge. Hmmm...I take it back--maybe my dad isn't cut-throat enough for the competitive world of lighthouse guides.

Now for some pictures from our visit. First, the lighthouse from outside:



Here's one of Vogel posing for a picture. Doesn't she seem in love with the lighthouse, too? Maybe SHE has a future career as a guide???



We also snapped a couple of pictures of the stairs leading up to the top. The climb is anxiety-producing, to say the least. There are about sixty stairs and then, at the top, two very narrow ladders that you have to climb up.





Getting to the top isn't so much a physical exertion as a mental one. I was so nervous that I was going to fall and humiliate myself. In the end, though, we got to the top like pros and took some pictures of the view. You can kind of see our reflections in the pictures, but again, I think that makes the pictures even cooler, especially since the day wasn't especially clear so they needed a little something extra to make them interesting.






Okay--more later. After all, I should be using this time to finish my syllabi. Bad teacher...

Chatham Lighthouse

As I mentioned in the previous post, we stayed in Chatham, where Vogel's parents have an awesome house. Chatham has a really cute and fun downtown area, but what I was most interested in, at least initially (being my father's daughter), was the Chatham Lighthouse, pictured below.



Right opposite the lighthouse is a beach where we went swimming one day. The first night we were there, though, we stopped by the lighthouse and I tried to take some pictures. Since I am just learning how to use my camera, and since it was really dark there, I couldn't figure out how to turn off the flash. The result was a couple of really spooky and cool photos. Vogel loved them. It was very foggy and humid that night, so what you are seeing (I think) is the moisture in the air. You are also free to think that they are ghostly entities. Accidents make for cool pictures, huh?





Another day, we stopped by a bit earlier in the evening and took these pretty shots. (And Vogel might kill me for putting her picture up here, but she'll get over it. And she LOVED that Java made it into the previous post, so maybe she won't mind?)





More to come later...

One last note: since my laptop is still broken, I didn't have access to any photo-editing software. The images from the previous post, you might see, are still quite large--too large for a blog and the space blogger allocates. (I am talking about file size here--not so much image size. Also, I couldn't crop anything either). My computer here at school doesn't have anything on it to scale things down, so I downloaded GIMP, a free program that works great. Props to freeware!

Blogging the drive to Cape Cod

Here's the first of several posts I'll do on my recent trip to Cape Cod with my friend Vogel.

It took us about 10 hours to get from Martinsburg to Chatham. We took our time, since we had to stop for Java, Vogel's dog, several times. That might sound like a long trip, but we actually had fun. Vogel indulges my penchant for bad singing and I appreciate her interpretive dances to such amazing songs as Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry" and this pretty darn awful new Bon Jovi song, "Let's Make a Memory."


For the record, Java is pretty awesome on long car trips. He gets nervous and pants a lot, but otherwise, traveling with him isn't that bad at all.

I tried to take lots of fun and interested car trip pictures, but failed rather miserably. Either A) I took the pictures too early and you can't tell what they are supposed to be or B) I took them too late and they appear to be pictures of nothing. Here's an example of each:


The first sign we saw that said "Cape Cod," but you can barely read it.


I am sure this was supposed to be a picture of something oh-so-interesting, but I was late on the draw, so it's the side of the highway. Oh well.


In my defense, though, some targets were next to impossible to catch. This one above, for instance, is of a semi-bald guy with "crazy hair" riding on a motorcycle. Vogel demanded I take a picture, but we never got close enough again. I tried. And his hair (what there was of it) was pretty crazy.

Okay--more to come later!