Date: 2018-09-02
To: Cape Cod, MA
Miles today: 0.0

We awoke at 5:45am...15 minutes before our 6am alarm went off. We organized some of our stuff then headed down the street to the Citgo gas station that also had a cafe inside. Spider had researched the best place for breakfast the day before on his way back from the laundromat. The Citgo station was the only place within walking distance.We had a great breakfast and best of all, ET got coffee! With our change of hiking plans, she has had to do without coffee the last two days. This was not good! But this morning the "beast" was calmed and all was good with the world.After breakfast we walked back to the motel and repacked our backpacks for vehicle travel from trail travel. On the trail certain items are stored outside the pack for easy access and storage, like tent parts, water filter and raingear. In vehicle travel everything is inside the pack so nothing can get caught, broken or lost...i.e. the backpack becomes a suitcase. Unfortunately that usually also means not everything will fit. So along with travel clothes in our "resupply" box we picked up yesterday, we also had cloth bags with handles to separately carry the overflow.By 7:45am we were packed and waiting outside when the shuttle arrived. Seth, the motel owners son, was our shuttle driver. We had a nice 2-hour drive to Augusta, ME to the Concord Coach Lines station. It's always amazing to watch the countryside go by, looking at the trees and rocks and think "I've been hiking through that for the last 5 weeks".We bought tickets to boarded the 10:15am bus headed to Boston's South Station. Easy ride on mostly freeways to Boston's South Station. There we bought tickets on the Plymouth & Brockton bus line to Cape Cod. Once on the bus, Spider gave our friends, Robert and Sherrie, a call to give them our ETA.At 2:15 we headed to Cape Cod. Spider was disappointed when kept looking out of the window hoping to see grand views of Cape Cod, only to see the same kind of trees lining the highway that we have been walking through the last 5 weeks! We exited the bus at Barnstable, MA to find our friends standing there. It's been several years since we last saw each other so it was great to reconnect.We piled our packs in the back of their car and headed out. In earlier communications we had agreed to do a little sightseeing that would let us stretch out our legs after almost 7 hours on the road. First we went to a boardwalk out over some marshes in Cape Cod bay. It is still the middle of Labor Day weekend so the nearby beaches had lots of people as did the boardwalk. The water looked clear. Our hosts said it was too cold for their tastes.Next we went to a stone tower on a high point overlooking a pond and beyond the bay. Apparently there are hundreds of these freshwater pond on the arm that forms Cape Cod bay...in fact our friends house is on a pond. Lastly we went to a "camp" that has been in Sherrie's family for generations. In an earlier post I talked about the term "camp" referred to a small summer house on a pond as it relates to our friends in Maine. The same term is used in Massachusetts. This camp was built by Sherrie's great-grandfather as a hunting shack in the 1920s. Around 6pm we headed to Robert and Sherrie's house on Mill Pond. It's a great house with lots of windows and a deck overlooking the pond. Sherrie brought out the hors d'oeuvres and Robert introduced us to a local mixed drink called a "Dark and Stormy". We did a lot of catching up as Sherrie and Robert prepared us a wonderful meal of grilled fresh tuna, potato salad, green salad, rice, bread and zucchini soup...all washed down with a California Chardonnay. A chocolate-amaretto cheesecake finished off the meal. Our friends marveled how much food we consumed. We've got to get this Hiker Hunger under control!  Finally, well after Hiker's Midnight, we headed off to bed...a real bed, 2 nights in a row!