Our first day of Cape Cod - Where have you seen this lighthouse?

We are way behind in getting travel posts published this summer because we're having too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

August 2, 2022

We were blessed with cool nights for sleeping in our boondocking spot in the field here on Cape Cod. But we still have to run our generator twice each day to charge our batteries and keep our refrigerator happy. So after running the generator this morning, we were out for a day of exploring on Cape Cod. But while we are exploring, we want to pose the question, "Where have you seen this lighthouse?"

Our goal was to see the Nauset Lighthouse that is pictured above. We'll just warn you that if you point google maps to Nauset Beach, it will take you to a town-owned beach that will charge you $30 to park, and the lighthouse isn't even there. Luckily, we figured that out before we paid. So we continued down the road to the Cape Cod National Sea Shore and showed our national park pass and got in for free. After watching two different films in the very nice Salt Pond Visitor Center, we looked through the displays. We learned that Cape Cod is the largest glacial peninsula in the world, and has one of the longest sandy shorelines on the East Coast. We're so glad that Doug has made his field available to us so we can see Cape Cod! Educated with all our visitor center information, we headed towards the beach on the Nauset Trail on our bikes.

We found that parking is sometimes very crowded at the beach, so we're glad to have the option to bike there. It's a shady down-hill trail through the trees to get to Coast Guard Beach on the national sea shore. All the while we rolled down-hill, Denisa was dreading the ride back up that hill.

The last of the bike trail was on a board walk as we crossed the wetlands before the beach.

The bike trail took us to the old Coast Guard headquarters on the hill top. No lighthouse here, but this old Coast Guard station sitting on the hilltop with ocean views is almost as pretty as one.

We weren't planning to do much swimming today, but this sign at the entry of the beach helped us decide to just walk the beaches. Great white sharks love the Atlantic beaches because seals are easy prey in these shallow waters.

Besides the permanent warning signs at the entry, the life guards are also flying the shark warning flag today.

While Coast Guard Beach was a little crowded close to the entry, it didn't take a very long walk up the sand to feel like we had the place to ourselves.

Because it is a national sea shore, it is protected from people building resorts or homes along the beach. We could see miles of pristine sand in front of us. We have wandered into another of God's wonders!

We're not seeing many sea shells on these pristine beaches, but occasionally a crab will be on the sand.

During this long walk on the beach, Denisa collected colorful pebbles. Today she spelled "CC" for Cape Cod.

The temperature is supposed to top out at 89 degrees today, but with the sea breezes it feels very nice on the beach. According to the display at the visitor's center, the water temperature is 67.6 degrees, so by walking in the surf we can cool off.

A cliff above the beach is eroding, sending rocks down onto the sand. Visitors have used those rocks to make a nice collection of cairns. We decided to try our hand at putting together a new stack of rocks, and found it was harder than it looks.

We have real respect for the visitor that balanced a standing arch in the sand.

After a mile walk along the sea shore, we got to our destination. We walked inland to see some lighthouses. These short little lights were built in 1892 on an eroding sea shore. So they were relocated into this forest location about a half-mile from the beach in the 1980s.

We went to the trouble to find them because they are called "The Three Sisters." Over our traveling years we have taken pictures of three sister mountain peaks, but this is our first set of three sister lighthouses. Denisa likes them because she is one of three sisters. Mark managed to get a picture of her with all three of the sister lighthouses in one frame.

Then we walked closer to the water where we took some time taking pictures of this famous Nauset Lighthouse. Where have you seen this lighthouse?

Mark went to great lengths, walking through the tall brush to get that picture at just the right angle. Where have you seen this lighthouse? Will it help if we tell you it was built in 1877, and relocated here in 1996?

Here's a hint.

If you have ever purchased Cape Cod Kettle Chips, that is the lighthouse found on the bag. If you compare this picture to the one several frames up in this blog, you will see that Mark did a good job of getting the right angle for the lighthouse and the keeper's house to match the bag.

With the lighthouses found, we now have the long beach walk ahead of us to get back to our bikes. Walking in sand seems to double the amount of energy used. So we're saying that this one-mile walk back equals two miles.

We are definitely getting to wander more of God's wonders today here at Cape Cod National Sea Shore!

On our walk back up the beach, we weren't alone. We spotted seals cruising the shallow waters of Cape Cod.

These are gray seals, which have big noses and horse-like snouts. They don't have the cute little cocker-spaniel faces like the harbor seals.

As we got closer to the more populated part of the beach, we watched as two swimmers were scrambling to get out of the water. With all the talk about sharks, they were unnerved when they saw the black body of a curious seal coming straight towards them.

We were back to the crowded section of the national sea shore, close enough to the parking area so people can haul their umbrellas and beach supplies to the sand for the entire day. Instead of walking the beaches like we prefer, most people spend the entire day sitting in one spot.

We're tired after that long walk in the sand, and when Mark offered to make the up-hill bike ride to get the pickup by himself, Denisa agreed that was a great idea! What a nice guy! He rode his bike back to the visitor center, and then picked Denisa up at the crowded parking lot right next to the beach. Chivalry is not dead! We've had a great day at the beach, but our day isn't over. After stopping in at Doug's office in Orleans and taking him out for ice cream, we stopped by the motor home to run the generator to recharge the batteries. Then we're off to Hyannis Port for some live music at the park right on the harbor. This is a summer concert series, and the band tonight was "Soul Purpose." Even though our legs were tired, we can report that there was some dancing in Hyannis Port this evening.

This is the village (that feels more like a small city to us) that was made famous by the Kennedy family. They have homes here in Hyannis Port, and spent much of their summers here near the ocean. It was closed by this evening, but we stopped by the JFK Museum where this village honors its favorite son.

What a day on Cape Cod!. We felt so blessed to be here, and to wander the wonders of its beaches. As an added bonus, we got to take that picture of the lighthouse that we have seen many times before.