P-town beach walk

The last weekend of the summer and Daphne suggested we stop thinking about afternoon naps and get up and do something cool, so off we went to the end of the Cape – Provincetown – for a walk on the beach, a stroll through the town, and a dinner at the Lobster Pot.

It is as far a drive to P-town as it is to Boston, so I stopped at Race Point, the apex of the Cape’s pugnacious curled fist of sand, to stop and stretch my arthritic knees. We walked down the beach, past the Lifesaving Museum, to the village of beach buggies gathered for the start of the Fall striped bass run.

The fishermen were waiting for the tide to change and cleaning some fish to the delight of the seagulls. I’ve always wanted to do this some fall, and intend to do a less extreme, and more solitary version of this lifestyle early in October when I take a week off.

We strolled for half an hour before our stomachs got the better of us and we had to drive into town for a seafood dinner at the Lobster Pot. I have to once again lament the state of New England Clam Chowder as the Lobster Pot’s won “Best of Cape Cod” something like ten years in a row thanks to an award bestowed on them by the execrable interior design magazine Cape Cod Life. This was, in this chowder reviewer’s opinion, an award winner only in terms of presenting, in a bowl, the archetype for that species of clam chowder known as the “wallpaper paste” model of thickened milk, potatoes, and suspect clams that dominates every menu in the world thanks to the corrupting influences of Snow’s canned goo.

The Cape Cod amber ale was good.

Walking around with a camera in a place as scenic as Provincetown makes a cynic like me instantly suspicious of every photo “op” as being a tourist motif that has been photographed to death by a bazillion Instamatics before me. Whatever, I had a good time, and am thankful I have stuff like this to snap pictures of in my very backyard when people come thousands of miles to see it themselves once in their lives.