October 15, 2008
It was cloudy all day today. The sun peeked through early on, but by later in the morning the clouds had moved in for good. I got up after 7 and took a brief walk along the beach before breakfast. I took this picture from the deck at the inn:
I was trying to capture the pearly quality of the light. I'm pleased with this picture, and I put it up as wallpaper on my laptop.
The continental breakfast was disappointing. I was hoping for muffins, and I got Thomas' "bagels" (in quotes because whatever those bready things are, they aren't bagels). The coffee was weak. The orange juice was fine. I talked to a couple from Pennsylvania for awhile. They come up here regularly.
I found out that they do in fact have WiFi here. It costs $10/week. I looked at my wireless connection icon and determined that their signal strength was poor, so I didn't even ask for it. I still want to find a coffee shop with free WiFi.
After breakfast I walked up to what I still think of as the Snow Inn jetty, the one by the entrance to Wychmere Harbor. That was the goal I set for myself this morning, just that small section. The sun was still out at that point. Here is a long shot of the beach:
The area where we used to go when I was a kid, the same area I brought my own kids, is in the misty distance.
When I got back to my room, I elevated my feet and read until around 11. Then I packed up my laptop and camera and went to Chatham. I stopped at the Chatham Jam and Jelly Shop (one of my goals for this trip) and bought pumpkin butter - my #1 item that I wanted to procure there - and a jar of dietetic cranberry jam. It uses Splenda. They give out free samples in the store, and this one was delicious. I haven't used jams with sugar added for years; if I had wanted to, I could have gotten any number of exotic jams like rose petal (flavored with petals of the rosa rugosa) or lemon geranium (I didn't try it; the saleswoman told me it had geranium leaves floating on top). They also have beach plum jelly, strawberry rhubarb jam, and other favorites.
Once in the center of Chatham, I parked on the street and went to Soft as a Grape, which was having a huge end-of-season sale. What a major disappointment! I remember this shop as having beautiful casual clothing with flowers and birds and whatnot screened onto them. I never could fit into their clothing when we used to spend summers in the area (1988-1992). When I lost enough weight to fit into them, my mother and sister took me to the Soft as a Grape outlet in Bourne and I bought a couple of tee shirts and a couple of sweatshirts. I still wear those sweatshirts in the winter. The tee shirts are more worn, so I don't wear them as much.
Today, when I went in, the entire store was filled with Boston Red Sox or Chatham, MA lettered stuff, still tee shirts and sweatshirts, but not a flower in the place. The closest thing to a print I saw was a Red Sox logo. Sigh.
So one of my goals in Chatham came to naught. My second one was to buy at least one pair of earrings, so I wandered down Main Street. I went into the Mayflower - reminiscent of an old dime store, but with lots of interesting junk and Cape souvenirs. My sister loves this place, and I went in mostly because I'm pretty sure she'll ask me if I did. I didn't buy anything, though. I went to the Yellow Umbrella bookstore and bought a couple of books: Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, and Whose Boy Be You? A Parcel of Recollections of Cape Cod Yesterdays, by Ben Thacher, "an old Cape Codger." He was born on the Cape in 1928 and has lived here all his life. I kept leafing through the book and seeing things that caught my attention, so I blew $20 on it. Eat, Pray, Love is subtitled "One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia." It's been around for awhile (written in 2006), on all the best-seller lists. I've been avoiding it because it has the word "Pray" in the title. (How pathetic is that?!) It's non-fiction and the author was striving to find her own identity after a divorce. I can definitely relate to that. I keep hearing good things about it.
Finally I got to the jewelry shop (which shall remain nameless for this chronicle) where I had gotten my bronze scallop-shell earrings many long years ago. I've found pretty stuff there in the past, and that's where I expected to find earrings. I was disappointed. Nothing reached out and grabbed me. I decided not to buy anything. I've still got a couple more days here, I thought, and I can always come back.
I crossed the street and walked up the other side, passing another jewelry shop, which didn't tempt me. Chatham Cookware, a shop where I've found good things in the past, is closed on Wednesdays. Maybe I'll go tomorrow. I didn't go into the candy shop where we've always gone - I'm not really in the mood for candy these days, which is a good thing. I was parked right in front of it, so I got into my car and drove down Main Street, thinking I might as well drive by the lighthouse.
That didn't happen. A little further down the street, I saw a shop called Dolli Llama. Clever name, that. I'd seen it on the way in and was curious about what they might sell there. Well, they sell jewelry. Lots and lots of earrings in a vast range of prices. I stood in front of the wall display for about half of a Sarah McLachlan live album (the music helped; I love her singing) trying to decide whether I should spend $55 on a pair of chalcedony earrings. Finally I decided to spend half as much on a pair of man-made opal earrings. They were very pretty, too, but they weren't the pair I wanted, so in mid-decision, after the saleswoman had taken them down from the wall, I asked her to show me the chalcedony earrings, too. (It's pronounced "cal-Sidney", the woman said. I'll have to check with my daughter the geologist, but that's probably right.) I ended up just getting them and putting back the opals. I'm delighted with them; they're the ideal souvenir of this vacation.
By then it was around 1 and I was finally hungry. I decided to go through with my plan to get lunch at Marion's Pie Shop. I got a pint of chicken vegetable soup and a cinnamon roll and brought them back to my room here. The soup was delicious, chock-full of real vegetables, zucchini and summer squash and green beans and peas and carrots. The roll was huge and decadent; it took me until after supper tonight to finish it, so it was two desserts! I was very pleased with my experience there.
After lunch I rested for awhile. Okay, for most of the rest of the afternoon. At maybe 4:30 I decided to go for another beach walk, since that's why I'm staying in an inn on the beach, right? Actually, the reason I chose this place is that every time I step out my front door, I am struck by how wonderful the view is.
I took this picture right after I arrived. Look over the parking lot to the dunes, sand and water and sky...and to me, the knowledge that it's the same sand and water and sky I loved when I was a little girl. Anyway, I thought I'd walk as far as the beginning of the seawall. (At some point in the past, when such a thing was still legal, a seawall was put in for probably 2/3 of the beach area.) When I got there I still had a lot of energy, so I kept going. I kept seeing things I recognized, which I won't list here even though they're in my original blog, because they won't mean anything to most of you. When I got to the beach where I used to bring my children, I turned around and went back. I want to go to Allen Harbor, but I didn't have my camera with me because the clouds were so lowering; I want to have better light for my pictures...oh, and there was somebody standing at the top of the stairs, or I would have climbed up. (The beach is accessed by a staircase down the seawall.) I got back here without any trouble. That's a lot of walking for a person with a fairly new artificial knee and a sprained "good" knee.
Supper tonight was a chicken cutlet sub from Harwichport House of Pizza (they go for the all-one-word spelling of the town's name), and the rest of the cinnamon bun. I watched the Presidential candidates' debate for awhile, but eventually turned them off because I wasn't paying attention. I called my son and confirmed when he and my other son would arrive on Friday. That's it for now.
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