9/13 to 9/20 - Cape Cod to New Jersey

We had a wonderful six days with Pat and John at their place on Cape Cod.  It was a very busy week with trips every day all over the Cape.  They are fantastic tour guides.  If I tried to cover everything we did this post would be so long no one would have time to read it so I’ll just try to hit some of the highlights.  Even with just highlights there are so many pictures I’m keeping my fingers crossed this will upload with the poor wifi we have here.

This is the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge at Buzzards Bay.  It’s a lift-bridge……the center stays up except when a train needs to cross the canal.  The “trash train” crosses twice every day, west carrying Cape Cod’s trash off the Cape for disposal elsewhere and east coming back empty.  

Opening to ship traffic in 1914, the Cape Cod Canal is an engineering marvel cut across the Cape from Cape Cod Bay to Buzzards Bay.  It greatly shortens the distance ships must travel between ports north and south of the Cape.  There are only two vehicle bridges to connect the outer cape to the rest of Massachusetts.  During the summer season traffic backs up for miles going east on Fridays and west on Sundays.   This is the bridge at Bourne.

Cape Cod Bay at Sandwich near the canal.

Salt marshes near Sandwich.

Nauset Light at Eastham.

Pat, Jim and John at Cape Cod National Seashore Visitors Center.

Provincetown at the far tip of the Cape.  It’s the northern version of Key West.

One of the things we were most interested in seeing was cranberry farming.  Ocean Spray has a vast cranberry operation on the Cape.  John took us by some of the fields hoping we’d see harvesting which is due to start any day.  We got lucky and found an area which was being harvested so we got to see how it’s done.  We also got to see fields of plants that hadn’t been flooded yet.  The plants don’t grow in water but the fields are flooded so the berries can be knocked off the plants.  They float on top of the ponds where they’re gathered for shipment.

After the cranberries are knocked off the plants by machine the surface of each pond is covered with them.  They’re encircled with a belt-type net which is pulled tight to gather them into as small a space as possible so they can be loaded into trucks.  One man was using a blower, three had pushers and one or two were pulling.  It’s hard work.

Cranberry field prior to being flooded for harvest.

A conveyor belt is picking up cranberries from the pond and loading them into trucks.  The man at left is pulling on the net to bring the berries to the conveyor.

Plymouth Rock in its enclosure.  Over the years people have chipped so much off the rock it’s nowhere near its original size.  It’s been enclosed now so no one can touch it.

The Mayflower II, an exact replica of the original Mayflower.

Nobska Light at Woods Hole, across from Martha’s Vineyard.  

View of Woods Hole from Nobska Light.  Martha’s Vineyard is in the distance at upper left.

New Bedford’s harbor wall.  Hurricanes Carol and Diane hit New Bedford in 1954 doing tremendous damage to the harbor and houses.  The federal government built a wall across the harbor to protect it in the event of another hurricane.  The boat in the center has just come through the opening in the wall.  This opening and another one at the far end have huge steel doors which are closed when a serious storm threatens the harbor.

New Bedford Harbor inside the wall.

Battleship Cove at Fall River, MA.  Four ships are open to the public including the battleship USS Massachusetts.  

Jim on the USS Massachusetts. 

John drove us around Newport so we could see the mansions on the oceanfront as well as the quaint town.  We didn’t stop on Millionaire Row so I didn’t get any pictures of the mansions.  They appear to have been built in a competition to see who could outdo whom.  Some were really beautiful, some weren’t attractive at all, and very few looked like something one would want to live in.  

A downtown Newport street on our way to lunch.

A residential side street with very interesting houses.  The little one with the truck in front was the “Doll House.”  A lot of the houses are identified by plaques giving their dates and names.  Many date back to the early 1700’s.

This one had the most elaborate shingles of all the houses we passed.

Rhode Island State Capitol Building in Providence.  We couldn’t get into a good position to take a picture while driving because of all the construction.  

On our way out of Massachusetts yesterday we passed the Dynergy power plant in Somerset.  It looks like a nuclear plant because of the cooling towers but it’s actually coal-fired.  We’re glad Duke Power’s plant at Lake Julian isn’t this big.

The pictures I got on the road yesterday from the Cape to northwestern NJ were of traffic and construction.  These are the only ones worth posting.

Traffic lined up for miles waiting to cross the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River.

This is the Hudson’s second widest point.   The cranes are in place for building the replacement bridge which is supposed to be ready in 2017.  The Tappan Zee was built in 1952-1955 and was only supposed to last 50 years.  It is in seriously deteriorated condition now.  When it was built it carried around 40,000 vehicles a day.  Now it carries 138,000 a day.  I’m glad we didn’t know about its condition before going over it.

Crane placing decking on I-beams.

This was my only picture for today.  We camped near the Delaware Water Gap which is a well-known geological feature in the north east.  We couldn’t register in our next campground until 2:00 pm so we drove over to the gap to see it.  It’s a beautiful area.   

Delaware River going through the Delaware Water Gap on the PA/NJ line near Stroudsburg PA. 

I didn’t take any more pictures after the gap because I accidentally left the camera in the RV.  It didn’t matter because, once again, all we saw was traffic.  We’re a few miles west of Philadelphia which is in panic mode getting ready for the visit of Pope Francis next weekend.  We’re very lucky our visit didn’t coincide with his.  People on the designated route had to move their vehicles elsewhere by today or they’d be towed.  The ones we saw interviewed on TV had moved them out to the suburbs with relatives but now they’re stuck having to find alternate transportation for over a week. 

We’ll be here for two days to see as much as we can (Valley Forge and Longwood Gardens in particular) before starting off on the 600+ miles home on Wednesday.