5/19/06 (Friday): Another sunny morning. The sun comes up so early here in New England—it starts to get daylight around 4:30 in the morning! And Maine is even further east!! I’m an early riser anyhow, and light is one of the things that wakes me up. Oh, well, it’s a small price to pay for being so close to the coast. It’s so cool to be on an ordinary errand (grocery shopping or going to the Laundromat), round a curve and see a spectacular view. The views are especially fantastic because most of the coastline is high above the level of the sea.

But I digress. Wiley got up early this morning and went fishing in the Cape Cod canal. I took advantage of the quiet and had a lazy morning. I slept in until 7:30 and then lounged around in my robe until almost 9:30. I read my book, drank my coffee and watched a little TV. Wiley didn’t have any luck (it’s still early in the season here), and it was drizzling rain again, so we decided to go do laundry.

It’s amazing how much fun ordinary things like doing laundry can be when you’re doing something that’s such a great conversation starter as our adventure. We wiled away a couple of hours while the clothes were washing having interesting conversations with the other patrons. Everyone has a story, don’t they!

We were too hungry to wait for lunch back in the camper, so we had our first fast food of the trip—cheeseburgers and fries from Burger King across the street from the Laundromat. It didn’t taste nearly as good as I’d been remembering. I think I’m actually getting hooked on home cooked food again. It’s been fun planning and fixing meals now that I don’t have the time constraints of an office job. Of course, eating meals in gorgeous surroundings helps, too.

The weather cleared after lunch, so we drove to Woods Hole. We took a little side trip hoping to see a lighthouse on the way, but we couldn’t get to it. We did see a red fox crossing the road on our side trip, so it wasn’t entirely wasted gas. Woods Hole wasn’t all that interesting because you can’t get into any of the research facilities. We did enjoy the aquarium.

After dinner we took a walk along Cape Cod Canal. There’s a nice bike path, and even though it was windy and cold, there were quite a few people out fishing, walking and biking. The canal is very interesting. It was built by the Army Corps of Engineers as a shortcut around the Cape for mariners. It saves an average of 135 miles of coastline travel around the tip of Cape Cod. There’s a 13.5 mile paved trail on the shore. It can handle some pretty large vessels.