Provincetown
Provincetown or P-Town is located on the very tip of the Cape. It was P-Town, not Plymouth, where the Pilgrims first landed in the US on the Mayflower.
Pilgrim Monument commemorates their landing in 1620.
We decided to take the five mile roundtrip hike to Long Point Lighthouse, one mile across the jetty and the rest over sand and beach.
Nantucket Island
We took the high-speed ferry to Nantucket. While interesting, I expected more.
The grey-shingled buildings are common on Cape Cod and the Islands.
We stopped at the Nantucket Whaling Museum. The 46 foot long sperm whale skeleton is one of the striking things about the museum. One of the exhibits depicts the Essex, the ill-fated whaleship which was sunk in 1820 in the Pacific Ocean and inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. There are exhibits of beautiful scrimshaw work and the whale oil trade.
As the whaling industry became more lucrative, so did the necessity for a jail.
A very large fire in 1846 destroyed much of downtown Nantucket. To commemorate the fire, there is a museum devoted to fire equipment used in the 1800’s.
Whale Watching
We had to go whale watching while in Cape Cod. We took a boat from P-Town to the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. We didn’t see any whales breach the water (darn), but was still a nice trip.