Cape Cod!

Y'all!  I'm back!  Did you even notice that I was gone?

I posted three crock pot recipes on July 29th and then headed to Cape Cod on July 30th and we didn't get back until August 9th.  And since then, I've been in the middle of PTO planning meetings, doctors appointments, dentist appointments and back-to-school shoe shopping! (One of the perks of attending a Catholic school is that I had already ordered all the uniform pieces from Land's End before we left for the Cape so shoe shopping is the only thing we had to do. And for that Peter, my non-shopper, is very grateful.)

We had a great time at the Cape.  We got to see Dan's sister for a couple of days.  We spent a lot of time with Dan's Uncle Bob and we also got to see Dan's brother and sister-in-law for lunch.  It was looking like we weren't going to get to spend any time with them so the fact that we were able to see them for lunch was a great bonus!  Although due to scheduling the kid's didn't get to see their cousin, Jillian and play their normal round of mini-golf and they were very disappointed about that.

We did a few new things that we hadn't done on past visits to the Cape.

We took a boat ride from Chatham and saw the seals:

The tide was going out so the sand bars were starting to emerge and all the seals flocked to them to lay on them.  We saw a ton of seals.  And they sounded like wounded cows!

We also strapped our bikes onto the back of the car and headed to Falmouth.  We parked and hopped on the Shining Sea Bike Trail.

From the official Cape Cod Bike Guide:  The Shining Sea Bikeway (SSB) was named for a line in the song America The Beautiful, written by Falmouth native Katharine Lee Bates. It follows the original route of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad that used to run from Buzzards Bay, through North and West Falmouth, around Woods Hole and into Falmouth Station. In the early 1970's the Town of Falmouth purchased the right of way, tore up the tracks and officially opened the 3.3-mile Shining Sea Bikeway in 1975. In 2009, a new 7.4-mile section was added, extending the trail to North Falmouth. This addition was built with a $3.2 million federal grant. Now the SSB runs 10.7 miles from County Road in North Falmouth all the way to the Steamship Authority parking lot in Woods Hole.

We biked the 3 and half miles from Falmouth to Woods Hole and got to see beautiful scenery - salt marshes, the ocean, rocky beaches, and several Osprey nests.  It was flat and breezy and absolutely perfect.  And when we got to Woods Hole, we hopped off our bikes and parked them at the Steamship Authority and walked around Woods Hole.  We found a nice place for lunch and after lunch we got back on our backs for the ride back to Falmouth.  We walked around Falmouth for a bit and got cupcakes.  It was such a great day.  I would definitely do that trail again!

Here are a few pictures from our ride:

Look at the beautiful view behind us.  That was our view for a lot of the ride!

Feeding the ducks at the restaurant.

Walking back to the bikes.

Cupcakes in Falmouth!

We also went to the Cape Cod Inflatable Park. Y'all!  This place was so much fun! They had something for everyone.

They had water slides (but we went at night after those had closed down), all kinds of bounce houses (of course, my kids were too old for those) and a whole section called The Challenge.  That's where my kids hung out most of the time. 

Sorry for the grainy cell phone snaps.  The kids had a blast and Sarah said the only thing that would have made the place more phone would have been if she could have had all of her friends there with her!

In addition to all of the new things we did on the Cape this year, we also spent lots of time on the beach:

And we got ice cream.  Lots of ice cream.  The Cape has so many good ice cream places.  We went out for ice cream 6 times and we only repeated the place once.  And I'm not even going to complain about how much weight I gained on vacation. 

 And we biked to Seagull Beach one evening and walked out on the jetty for a pictures.

We had great weather and we made a lot of good memories!

And I can't believe there's only one more week of summer vacation left!