I know I was off to Cape Cod, but can I return to Portsmouth for a moment.

Just off from the harbour is a sort of town square area. Loads of shops
and wide pavement areas. When we were there there were a lot of young
people just sort of hanging around, sitting on the sidewalk or standing
around in groups chatting. In amongst this we saw a quite dramatic
contrast.

Pulled over in a 'No Parking' area was a big four wheel drive pick up
thing. All black with dark windows and enormous wheels. Alongside was
Portsmouth Police's finest. Black and white Harley with everything
flashing and the cop standing by the drivers door looking mean, not that
you could see 'mean' behind his mirror shades and crash helmet. He was
your stereotypical US traffic cop and he was packing the only gun we saw
during the entire fortnight. He strutted around, checked the plates, did
all the stuff, wrote the ticket and then both parties left.

The contrast was just on the other side of the road. A Black and White was
pulled half up on the sidewalk and the two cops were just sat on the
ground in amongst a bunch of youngsters having a chat and a laugh with
them. No guns, no sticks, no aggravation.

Two sides of Portsmouth police. Just an observation.

Back on the road to Cape Cod.

This would have been, could have been, should have been one of the
highlights of the holiday.

If you have ever wanted to visit somewhere simply because of the name,
then you will know what I mean. I want to go to Singapore one day, for no
other reason that the name strikes a chord with me and Cape Cod comes
close on my list of desirable places. I have a friend who had a similar
longing for Barrow in Furness, a town in England, on the edge of the Lake
District. If he ever goes there he will be disappointed. If I ever get to
Singapore I might be disappointed but I don't think so. I wasn't
disappointed with the Cape.

On the Cape proper, after you cross the canal, there is one of those
excellent information centres. I like these things in America, they are
manned by courteous, interested people who seem to believe that *you* come
first. The only place on the UK that I have experienced anything remotely
like this is on the Scottish border as you travel up the M6, on Gretna
services. There may be others, I don't know.

At this information place we picked up leaflets about a number of nice
looking moderately priced motels on Cape Cod. We chose to head for south
Yarmouth because that was where a couple of the more appealing ones were.
They were both on route 28, so we thought that's an easy solution to our
lodgings for the two nights and off we went.

28 runs all along the south coast of Cape Cod but there is a section
between West Dennis and Hyannis, which is effectively South Yarmouth. It's
about three miles long and it is almost totally motels and restaurants,
with a couple of malls and a large drugstore thrown in to break up the
monotony.

Now anywhere else where we had been it had been noticed that motels have
check-in times, usually three o'clock. This meant that rooms were not a
problem cos we were trying to book in well before that so that we knew we
had a bed for the night.

In S.Yarmouth, the first thing you notice (at one o'clock remember) is all
the No Vacancy signs. Particularly on the motels of our choice.

Somebody knew something we didn't, around here. Like, get there early and
get booked in. All that were left were the expensive or the less than good
looking ones - Hey ho.

Anyway we booked into the local Super 8, as much for the 10%% discount that
our brand new temporary card allowed us, as anything else. It was only
after booking in that we noticed something somewhat uncool.

At the first motel that we had stayed at, we were given a room right up the far
end of the corridor on the ground floor, as it turned out, next to the
stairs.

The noise from people walking up and down the stairs kept us awake till
quite late and the noise made by the people in the room above kept us
awake even longer. Then all the people who went up the stairs that night
started coming down again soon after six a.m. Happy days.

Our second Motel, where we asked for an upstairs room well away from any
stairs, had a truck stop out the back. Trucks coming and going all night,
wonderful.

Motel three, S.Yarmouth, was under the flight path for Hyannis airport.
How we laughed.

More later.

--------------------------------------------

Part 9
--------

There is good news and, hey, even more good news. First of all the
planes stopped around ten, so they did not disturb our sleep.
Second of all we had 60 channels back on the TV. After the 12
channel horror of our previous digs, we were back where we left off in the
last Super 8. Exciting? I should say so.
I had set myself a challenge earlier. Channel hop through all 60
without seeing a TV programme. I almost did it but the weather channel let
me down every time. Just not enough damn commercials on there.
The Weather Channel was the life saver, if nothing else we could
watch the progress of Floyd slowly drifting up the coast towards us. Would
it get there before we left? Would it matter if it did? These were
important questions to us at the time.

Having settled in, we cruised the strip, sampled the interior of the
oversize drugstore and then stuffed food in our faces. yep I was hungry
again. It's getting to be like some kind of addiction.

After feeding time we decided that we should visit Hyannis proper,
so we did. There's money there all right. Huge boats and things and
enormous houses. My sort of place, for sure.
We only glimpsed it of course, that's what we do, me and Wendy, we
glimpse places. Drive in, drive out. Cool place. where next?

Truthfully I would have liked more time in Hyannis, like most other
places on this trip. I think you could spend a fair amount of time
wandering around looking for someone called Kennedy, never mind anything
else.

Now a question for any nature lovers out there. What colour do
termites come in? When we got back to our room I discovered the biggest
ant that I have ever seen. A truly American ant. I killed it. Didn't
hesitate, it was me or the ant and I won. Dead ant, or was it?

As far as I know termites only come in white, in which case this was
definitely an ant - cos it was black. I mean it might have been a Model T
termite or a GTO termite, but I couldn't see what was wrote on the back
end so I aint sure.
Now the thing is this, if termites are only ever white then no
worries, but if they do have the optional black paint job, then could
someone tell the owners of the Hyannis Super 8 motel. The place is an
entirely wooden structure and that would seem to be a recipe for disaster.

Wednesday we entered our last full day. We went to Provincetown. Now
this was one of the reasons for being on this side of the Atlantic, to
drive out to the end of Cape Cod. Don't ask me why, I only plan this
stuff, I don't question it. From the moment I knew we were flying over for
a spell, I was determined that I would stand on the end of Cod.

Now if I have learned one thing on this trip it's this, however far
you think somewhere looks on a map, double it. Or indeed treble it. It
saves anguish later.

I thought it was only about thirty miles to Provincetown. Dummy.

More later
------------------------------------------------

Part 10
-----------

They say it ain't over till the fat lady sings and at this point in the
Adventure, she hadn't even left home for the theatre, but on that
Wednesday morning as our trusty Pontiac Grand Am roared along Highway 6
towards the farther reaches of the Cape, I sensed that the woodwind
section was getting tuned up ready for her entrance.

Holiday ends are always anticlimactic at least they are for me and Wend.
The mix up of feelings, wanna stay, wanna go home, always leaves us with a
sense of drifting towards the big finish. Today was going to be different.

I suppose because our home base was a termite chewed motel room, the
normal 'last day' ritual of sort of hanging around, waiting for the
inevitable, was never on the cards. Besides I wanted to drive up to the
end, and we did.

Out where the four lane blacktop that is highway 6 goes down to two lanes,
if you make a right you will find yourself in one of those nature park
areas with walks and an information centre and a beeg car park.

I am ashamed to say that I never wrote down the name of this place and the
map that I brought back isn't detailed enough to show it. But if you're up
that way and want to see it it's near Eastham.

Out back down towards the shore, there was a marked trail with individual
plants and trees identified and information about the wildlife. It's about
two miles long and a nice easy stroll.

Two things stick in my mind about that walk. As we were about halfway
round the walk we came across a group of bird watchers. Surprise surprise.
They had their spotting scopes and binoculars trained on the mudflats
which to my, admittedly untrained, eye, contained one duck.

We walked past the group who watched as we passed. Some muttered greetings
to as (I think) but most just sort of stared. After we were out of sight
of them, we wondered if we had scared all the other birds away as we
approached them.

You see, there are no signs saying 'Don't scare the birds' and so we
weren't particularly quiet as we behaved like a couple of schoolkids out
on a ramble. Hey ho, youngsters, what can you do with em?

The other thing that I remember was the 'blind' trail.

Part of the trail that we walked, coincided with a shorter walk laid out
for blind people. The trail was lined with a guide rope and every point of
interest was adorned with a brass plaque with the description of the
tree/flower/whatever in braille.

The kneejerk reaction here is to wonder what good this stuff is to people
who can't see, but it only takes a second or two to realise that they can
see. They see with their minds and their hands and the descriptions on the
plaques (written in printed English as well, fortunately for dummies like
me - I tried shutting my eyes and fingering the braille, nothing)
described what I was looking at so beautifully that merely looking at
things didn't quite seem enough.

I don't know if this sort of thing is done in the UK, but if not, it damn
well ought to be.

From the car park we drove down to the beaches and the Atlantic Ocean.

Absolutely wonderful sandy beaches that stretch for miles. Huge waves
pounding the beach and surprising people who stood to far down the beach.
Glorious sunshine, so that the people caught by the waves didn't care too
much about getting wet. Surfers doing their stuff on the big waves.
Wonderful.

As an Englander, I found it hard to believe that there are people who have
never seen the sea. But once I realised that the middle of the US is an
awful long way from the coast, then it's not so hard to believe. If you
have never been to a beach or seen the ocean, take a tip from me - Cape
Cod is as good a place to start as you will get.

We considered looking over the lighthouse, but decided against it.
Lighthouse Schmighthouse. Once you've seen one you've seen them all.
Not really. A coach load of schoolkids had just arrived, so we passed on
it. This lighthouse ain't big enough for the both of us.

One thing that is noticeable out there along the outer reaches of the Cape
is the lack of places to eat drink and be merry.

By the time we reached Provincetown we were extremely thirsty.

More later