Just got back from a lovely family vacation in Cape Cod and the surrounding area. This was the first full-week vacation we’ve taken in years, since before the pandemic. Lizzy drove up from Buffalo at met us at Martin’s house outside of Albany, and left her car there. She was all excited because she just bought a new car a few weeks ago. We all took my car from there to make things easier. It was great to be together with both kids for a week and hang out and have fun.
First day we took the ferry out to Martha’s Vineyard. We mostly walked around town and ended up a restaurant having lobster rolls and cold drinks. Then we stayed on Cape Cod for a few days in a sort of resort hotel suite on the beach with a loft and a balcony looking out over the ocean. Went swimming in Nantucket Sound, where the sea there was surprisingly warm and gentle, although the beach was a bit stony after you got in a little ways. Enjoyed the sea and sunshine, went out for breakfast, ice cream, and more seafood dinners, played games in the evening.
One day we drove out to the end of cape, to Provincetown. It was a cute fun town, alot like Martha’s Vineyard. We took a whale watching tour and saw several groups of different kinds of whales. Spent most of our time with a pair of humpbacks who lifted their tails out high out of the water before they dove down.
Another afternoon we went to the National Seashore on the Atlantic side. Saw some lighthouses and the landing for the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, as well as the Marconi station where they sent the first trans-Atlantic wireless communication over a hundred years ago. There was also a hiking trail thru the marsh which was pretty cool. I took a swim in the ocean on one of the beaches there. The water was much colder than on the south side.
We spent a couple of days in Boston. We stayed in a hotel right near downtown, and spent a good deal of time walking around the city. The first day we went to the aquarium, which was pretty cool, and ended up at a pub that’s been there since the 1700’s for dinner. Next day we went to the science museum, which included the planetarium and an electricity demonstration with Van de Graaff generators and Tesla coils that could play music. I found these pretty fascinating, but when I asked after the show the presenter didn’t really have a strong idea of how the Tesla coils were made to play in pitch. So I looked it up, and it turns the lighting actually can be made to fire off at a controlled frequency by modulating the voltage. This creates a tone and basically makes the Tesla coil a speaker. The voltage controller can be driven by a midi interface and suddenly, music! Now I’m thinking of getting one for Spacecats. I wonder if it’s safe in a bar or nightclub.
That evening we went to see the Red Sox play at Fenway Park. We’d been trying to get to a Mets game all summer but the timing didn’t work out, so we did this instead. It’s been years since I went to a baseball game, and it was alot of fun.
The last day we headed out northward. Spent the morning at Salem, and went to the witch museum, which was strangely fascinating. Spent the afternoon at a beach in New Hampshire, which had the same vibe as Cape Cod but a bit more low key. The beach itself was nicer, more sandy and less stony, plus has some big rocks. After that it was back to Martin’s where we hung out most of the following day, and finally Lizzy took off and we went back home too.
