We arrive in Provincetown, the north tip of Cape Cod, on Sunday afternoon. Mooring balls are less expensive so we grab one rather than tie up on the dock. This marina has a launch service where a call on the VHF gets you a skiff ride to the dock.
We walk around town and, since it’s Sunday, Matt and the boys get ice cream. We go to a place called the Purple Feather Treatery. These chocolate treats sit on a shelf – I wonder how I’ll explain them to the boys.
The local mag has a great review of a show called Snow White and the Seven Bottoms, which has “very different names than Sleepy, Dopey and Doc.” I tell Matt that our experience here would be much altered if it were just the two of us. I’d love to go to all of the drag shows and hang out in town at night. I tell him I could imagine living on my own here for a year. The vibe is one of freedom, creativity, and acceptance. It seems like a great place for a writer or an artist. On Monday, Matt takes the ferry from P-town to Boston and then the train from Boston to Mystic, CT to pick up the van. We have some urgency because my sister lives in NH and is expecting twin girls the last week of August. I want to be there for her and her other two children when she goes into labor. While Matt is gone, the boys and I hang out on the beach and walk around town.
When Matt returns on Tuesday afternoon, we decide to drive down to Wellfleet, a town further south on the Cape. Matt’s brother and family are arriving in a few days at a nearby town and we want to get a look before we arrive by boat. All I can say is the law of supply and demand is in full swing up here. The marinas are prohibitively expensive, charging two to six times what we usually pay. And they’re kind of gross. They have some of the worst facilities we’ve seen on the whole East coast. Two of them even have a coin-operated shower that charges by the minute (great for water conservation). The water is shallow here and we’re told that at low tide the boat will basically be sitting in the mud. “Kind of like chocolate pudding,” the dockmaster says. The town itself is absolutely adorable. Much less crazy and quainter than Provincetown. We have dinner out and then drive back to P-town.