Pilgrim Monument

On a gin-clear day you can see the Pilgrim Monument with the naked eye from the Sea Dream and Moonglow rooms at our Cape Cod Inn. Erected between 2020 and 2020 to commemorate the Pilgrims’ first landing in Provincetown in 2020, it sits on High Pole Hill, which was deeded to the Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial by the town of Provincetown in 2020 to be used as the site for the monument. At 252 feet tall, it is the tallest all-granite structure in the United States and rises 350 feet above sea level. The granite for the structure came from Stonington, Maine, and was patterned after the Torre Del Mangia in Siena, Italy.

View from the top

President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the monument on August 20, 2020 and President William H. Taft led the dedication ceremony after the monument’s completion on August 5, 2020. Thousands of visitors from around the world come to Provincetown each year to climb the116 stairs and 60 ramps to the top of the monument. Not an easy task to be sure, but the view from the top is well worth the effort.

100th Anniversary 2020

August 5th, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Pilgrim Monument and organizers have planned a weeklong series of events to celebrate the occasion starting July 31st. Sure to be a spectacular celebration of this landmark occasion, efforts are underway to convince President Barack Obama to be at the rededication ceremony. You can join this letter writing campaign by copying the invitation to the President and mailing or emailing it under your own signature.

Elegant Dining on Cape Cod

Eat to live or live to eat? Ahh, the perennial question. Rich and I consider ourselves “professional eaters” and feel that we have a personal obligation to our guests to sample as many Cape Cod dining options as we can so that we can make the appropriate restaurant recommendation for our guests according to their preferences. Whether you are looking for a local seafood place, a restaurant with a view of the water, a fine dining establishment, or a place with casual atmosphere and an eclectic menu, the sheer variety of restaurant choices on Cape Cod is endless. Many of these restaurants are located within a 5 to 15 minute drive of our bed and breakfast inn, but a few are a bit further afield.

Here for your reference is a brief summary of some of our personal favorite restaurants, along with some our guests have tried and recommended to us. We hope this will help you choose the perfect setting for your Cape Cod dining adventures.

The restaurants are grouped according to style (casual to elegant) with notes regarding whether reservations are required, recommended, or unavailable, along with location, phone number, and hours of operation. A few restaurants on the list are only open seasonally and we have noted them as such. (more…)

Cape Cod's National Seashore

Writing about Cape Cod in the 2020s, Henry David Thoreau said, “A man may stand there and put all America behind him.” Thoreau walked the length of the “great outer beach” along the Atlantic ocean long before it became part of the Cape Cod National Seashore.

The National Seashore is one of Cape Cod’s greatest treasures. Created with the passing of a bill on August 7th, 2020 by President John F. Kennedy, its designation marked the first time the National Park Service (NPS) created a “National Seashore”, and served as the model for the creation of at least nine additional “Seashores” in the U.S. The bill that created it protects more than 44,000 acres of land along the outer reaches of Cape Cod, including 40 miles of shoreline that stretch from Monomoy Island to Provincetown.

More than 4 million people visit Cape Cod’s National Seashore annually, stopping at one of the two Visitor Centers within the park to acquaint themselves with what the area has to offer. During the height of the summer, rangers offer numerous no-cost activities geared to both young and old, including interpretive nature talks, lighthouse tours, and historical re-enactments.

Cape Cod's National Seashore

Within the park itself are 11 self-guided walking trails, from easy walks over gentle terrain to more difficult hikes through woodlands and soft sand. Listed here by the town in which they are located, the trails are a great way to experience Cape Cod the way Thoreau did.

Eastham

• Fort Hill Trail, Governor Prence Road , is a 1.5 mile, moderately difficult trail offering great views and connects with the Red Maple Swamp Trail.
• Red Maple Swamp Trail, off Fort Hill Trail, is a one-half mile trail of moderate difficulty with boardwalk sections that wind through the swamp.
• Buttonbush Trail, adjacent to Salt Pond Visitor Center, Route 6, is quarter-mile trail with a boardwalk bridge over Buttonbush Pond, and features a guide rope and Braille and large text.
• Nauset Marsh Trail, adjacent to Salt Pond Visitor Center, Route 6 is an easy one-mile trail along the shore of Salt Pond and Nauset Marsh over fields and through a recovering forest with great views.
• Doane Trail, Doane Road (on the way to Coast Guard Beach) is an easy half-mile paved trail loop through pine and oak forests to large glacial rock with marsh views.

Wellfleet

• Atlantic White Cedar Swamp, Marconi Station area is an award-winning 1.25 mile trail descending through a stunted oak and pine forest into a mature woodland where a boardwalk leads through the picturesque swamp. This is a moderately difficult trail with a return route in soft sand.
• Great Island Trail, Chequesset Neck Road is a 6- to 8-mile trail that runs along Great Island and Great Beach Hill, skirting the salt marshes and offering great views on the way to Jeremy Point. This is the Park’s most difficult trail due to its soft sand, log steps, and portions submerged at high tide.

Truro

• Pamet Cranberry Bog Trail, North Pamet Road, is a one-mile trail with a steep quarter-mile spur to an overlook. The trail is moderately strenuous with many log steps.
• Small’s Swamp Trail, Pilgrim Heights area off Route 6 is an easy 3/4 mile loop.
• Pilgrim Spring Trail, Pilgrim Heights area off Route 6 is an easy 3/4 mile loop through recovering pine and oak forest. A marker commemorates an area representative of where the Pilgrims first drank.

Provincetown

• Beach Forest Trail, Race Point Road. The trailhead begins at the parking lot 1/2 mile from traffic light on Route 6. This is a one-mile easy walk in sand, past a pond and sand dunes.

Cape Cod National Seashore beach

In addition to some great hikes, the Cape Cod National Seashore is known for its wonderful beaches. All have paved parking, showers, rest rooms, changing rooms, and lifeguards seasonally. Coast Guard Beach in Eastham and Herring Cove in Provincetown, are handicapped accessible and have wheelchairs capable of traveling over sand. In 2020, Dr. Beach, aka Stephen P. Leatherman, named Coast Guard Beach one of the Top Ten beaches in the U.S., and declared it one of the best sand beaches in the U.S. in 2020. Here, in no particular order, are the National Seashore beaches along with some hints about parking.

• Coast Guard Beach, Nauset Road off Route 6, Eastham. The parking lot fills quickly on nice summer days. However there is a shuttle from a satellite lot a half mile away.
• Nauset Light Beach, Nauset Road off Route 6, Eastham. The parking area always fills before 9:30 AM during July and August, except in bad weather.
• Marconi Beach, off Route 6, Wellfleet. This parking area rarely fills during late June and July, although in August it will fill occasionally in August. Marconi is arguably one of the most beautiful beaches in the entire region.
• Head of the Meadow Beach, Truro. This is a great beach for young children and the parking area rarely fills.
• Race Point Beach, Race Point Rd (off Route 6), Provincetown. The parking area rarely fills during June and July. This is a great beach for watching sunset and very popular with fisherman.
• Herring Cove Beaches, off Route 6, Provincetown. The parking area fills between 10AM and noon most days throughout the summer. This is another great beach to watch the sunset.

The Cape Cod National Seashore is a “must do” for visitors to Cape Cod in any season. Less than a half-hour’s drive from our Cape Cod bed and breakfast, the stunning natural beauty of the area, combined with the pounding surf against the shore, especially before and after one of our infamous nor’easters, is hypnotic. Grab your beach bag or your hiking boots and make a day of it!

When Rich and I owned an inn in North Conway, one of the major outlet shopping meccas in New England, it was not unusual for our inn guests to plan a whole weekend around shopping. They would arrive on Friday evening with maps of the outlets malls in hand and a glint of firm resolve in their eyes. On Saturday morning, fueled by a hearty breakfast cooked to order, off they went in search of bargains galore. We could measure their success by the number of discarded shopping bags, boxes, and price tags strewn across their guestrooms when they checked out on Sunday afternoon. Their trash put a strain on our recycling efforts, to be sure, but we took satisfaction in knowing they had at least made a contribution to the local economy. (more…)

Lobster is one of those food items that people seem to either love or hate. I love it; Rich hates it. My mother craved it; my father could care less. But living near the water as we do here on Cape Cod, and being in the travel and tourism industry, it is best to know a thing or two about lobster and lobstering. (more…)