Sunday 20 November 2016

Cape Cod and Provincetown

Friday 18th November.
This weekend, Plymouth is having its annual pre-Thanksgiving parade. One of the marching bands was staying in the hotel and, quite late last evening, someone was practising rhythms on a snare drum in the room above us. M thought it was someone on a cycle machine, so ignored it!
Today, we decided to drive down to Cape Cod to see the canal which was opened in 1914 to provide a short cut that avoided the treacherous south coast of Cape Cod, and to visit the Wampanoag Museum in Mashpee to learn more about the local Indian tribe.
The Cape Cod Canal effectively turns the Cape into an island and there are only two road bridges across it connecting the Cape to the mainland. We drove across one and could see that the canal is comparable in size to the Manchester Ship Canal, designed for large ships, except that it has no locks and is all at sea level.
We drove on to Mashpee, where we went in to the Wampanoag Museum. It is a small house and we were the only visitors. We were shown around by a very knowledgeable young lady called Courtney, whose tribal name means "Spirit of the First Light". Wampanoag means "People of the First Light" as they were the furthest east tribe, closest to the sunrise, in this part of New England. Behind the house, they had a "Wetu" long house similar to the one at the Plantation.
 
Courtney was a mine of information on the Wampanoag and their history. For many years, to speak their language was illegal, but recently there has been a revival and now tribal children speak their language at home and even at school.
M, who had been studying the map, suggested that we should drive to the very end of the Cape, thinking that it was about five miles away. In fact it is fifty miles each way - she blamed this on the fact that the map was very small scale! 
However, it was well worth the drive as it was a lovely trip and the trees in particular were beautiful. Many had shed their leaves but there were still enough reds, yellows and golds to make a lovely colourful display. At the far end of the Cape is the little town of Provincetown, which is a delight. New England style houses clustered in a charming manner around the harbour - it was somewhere that one felt one could comfortably live.
Provincetown has two major claims to fame, the first being that it was the first landfall of the Mayflower on 11th November 1620. The ship anchored in the sheltered bay because the stormy weather from the south prevented them from going any further south towards their original destination of Viginia. 
The second is that, before going ashore, they wrote up a set of rules by which everyone agreed to govern themselves and, in particular, to prevent dissent between those of the Reformed Church and others not of their faith. It was known as the "Mayflower Compact" and it was the first written framework of government established in what is now the United States.
The Mayflower stayed off Provincetown until she finally moved to Plymouth at the end of December and the Pilgrims started to set up the village there.
To commemorate these events, Provincetown built a "small" granite monument 252ft high.
 
We climbed to the top, where we had a splendid view of the harbour and, we were told, from which you can see Boston on a clear day.
 
Our drive back to Mashpee, where we had booked a B&B, was in the dark. It was our very first "Airbnb" and we were welcomed by Renee, the owner, and introduced to her two cats, Rosie and Oscar. It was only after talking to Renee that we understood why few American households have cats - there are too many predators lurking around for it to be safe for cats to wander around freely on their own.

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