Cape Cod in the Mist

Earlier this week I visited Cape Cod for the first time.  I found it to be very similar to the Oregon Coast!  Fine beaches, backed by cliffs; rustic architecture with dashes of affluent modern thrown in; Pine forests; dunes; a busy thoroughfare...US 6 here, US 101 in Oregon...with many quiet areas elsewhere.  The only thing that seems much different is the climate...not last Wednesday, when it was gray and misty here, as it is so often in Oregon; but on average Cape Cod winters are much colder and drier than on the Oregon coast, while summers here are much warmer and wetter. 

An old coast guard station, preserved as a ranger residence.

Flag blowing out stiff on a blustery day.

There are many lighthouses here, legacies of the 1700s and 1800s, when the Cape was the graveyard of hundreds of ships, done in by fog or nor'easters.

I stayed at the Cove Motel in Orleans, right on an inlet, quiet except for the birdsong.  Very nice.

The forests of Cape Cod were mostly cut down by white settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries, but have since regrown into gnarly pines.

Sand, sea, sky...near Provincetown.

Grass, sea, sky.  One sees why the Cape is an artists' haven.  Abstract scenes abound, and change constantly.

First Encounter Beach.  Here in the fall of 1620, the Pilgrims met the local Native Americans for the first time.  Shots and arrows were exchanged but nobody was hurt seriously.  The Indians were POd because the Pilgrims had "appropriated" a good deal of the Indians'' seed corn before the two groups actually had this face to face encounter.