Labor Day Weekend

Like nearly every other New England-dweller, I vacationed on Cape Cod for Labor Day weekend. Unlike all of them, though, I did it in style!

Welcome to the Cape.

Colin's friend and fellow Yale PhD student, Meredith, grew up on the Cape and was headed home for the long weekend with her boyfriend Justin. She invited us to join them, and of course we said yes! Meredith's parents live in Dennis, which is a small, quaint town on the northern shore (Cape-side, not Atlantic-side). If Cape Cod is a flexing arm, Dennis is smack in the middle of the bicep. Best of all, Meredith's house was an easy ten-minute walk from a public beach, a ten-minute drive from the private beach at the yacht club to which her parents belong ("Boat club," Meredith insisted. "Yacht club sounds too snotty, and there are no yachts anyway--only sailboats and a couple kayaks."), and her backyard was right on a lake. At the lake, Meredith's parents - who own a gourmet restaurant, more on that later - share a small dock with a couple kayaks and a canoe with the bed-and-breakfast next door. All in all, I think we had better accommodations than any of the other tourists that weekend!

Hooray for private beaches!

It only gets better, though, when you consider Meredith's parents' restaurant. Her dad is one of the chefs and her mom the hostess, and the fare could alternately be described as French-American fusion/local-sustainable cuisine/gourmet seafood. The restaurant is actually attached to their house, which brought a lot of perks--namely, constant access to fresh ingredients, high quality wine, and a friendly bartender who will make drinks for you to take back to your living room. Indeed, the four of us decided to eat at the restaurant on Saturday night, but we had to wait until the after-dinner rush to so as not to take a table away from real customers. We ordered drinks - and debated ordering appetizers - to tide us over while we sat in Meredith's living room and watched Michigan football get crushed by 'Bama in the first game of the season.

The weekend was pretty much perfect: Colin and I took the bus up from Boston on Saturday morning and arrived in time for a quick sandwich lunch and an afternoon at the beach. It was a gorgeous, sunny day. We swam for a few minutes before we got too cold (and don't worry, we weren't near the part of the Cape where sharks had been sighted), and then ran back to our five square feet of space on the sand to sunbathe. After a while, the tide went out, revealing a huge, flat beach. People spread out, and some started heading home for the evening, and we took advantage of all the room to play kubb. Dinner that night was at the restaurant.

Sunday was gray and cloudy, probably because I remembered to bring my camera to the beach. We opted for the private yacht club beach and spent the morning napping, building sand structures, and playing frisbee. We had packed a picnic lunch. Later, we walked to a jetty on the other side of the little harbor.

Cute guy.

Meredith and Justin looking for seashells.

We walked out along the jetty to see what the ocean looked like way out there.

Colin made himself dinosaur feet.

Then Colin got bored of sunbathing and started digging.

In the mid-afternoon, the sun finally came out (after a few raindrops), so Meredith and I planted ourselves on our towels to sunbathe.

It decided to drizzle for a minute, and we were sad. Not too sad to leave, though.

But the sun came out!

Colin and Justin looked really bored, so they took the yacht club's two kayaks up into the saltmarshes. Meredith and I both fell asleep, and when we woke up, we realized we had no idea what time the boys had left, or what direction they'd gone, or anything--except that it was 5:00 and we were supposed to be cooking dinner for her parents that night. Our plan had been to start cooking at 5:00, and we hadn't even gone grocery shopping yet! Meredith and I decided we would veto the gourmet meal that we'd selected earlier, settle for quick and easy grilled fish with corn on the cob and salad, and we'd crack open a cold drink while we waited for the boys. Just in the nick of time, they showed up. No cold drinks for us. They still wanted to do the gourmet meal (grilled lobster on a bed of ricotta gnocchi with wilted arugula and grape tomatoes). (To start it off, we also did pan-seared scallops atop pesto-smeared brioche.)

Before you get too impressed, let me tell you that NOT A SINGLE ONE OF US KNEW HOW TO COOK ANY OF THAT. Let me also give you a hint as to who first found and then decided we should use this recipe anyway:

Same guy who wanted us to take out one of the yacht club's sailboats. Of the four of us, Meredith had taken sailing lessons one summer when she was 14; I had been sailing for four months on a river, never on the ocean; and Justin could only offer that his brother knows how to sail. Colin had nothing. Now guess who decided we should take out a boat, and cook a fancy-shmancy meal beyond our comfort zone for our gourmet chef hosts!

Sailboats that we could've taken out, if only we'd had someone with decent sailing experience.

Sigh. At least it turned out well, but I think the arugula was over-wilted, and the lobsters would probably still be raw if Meredith's dad (the real chef) hadn't jumped in to help. Anyway, it was impressive!

On Monday, we made blueberry and raspberry pancakes for breakfast and then drove to a cute pottery shop nestled among a little forest of pine trees. We also stopped by the observation tower built on a hill overlooking the lake. Then we hurried back in time to get in a paddle around the lake and a brief swim (the lake was so much warmer! still freezing, but tolerable!). For lunch, we went with Meredith's parents to a seafood shack by the water, situated right on a canal so you could watch the boats (real yachts included) come and go. I had delicious fish 'n' chips, and the sun was once again beaming down brightly to warm me up.

Scargo Lake (and the Atlantic Ocean behind it) from the observation tower

 After lunch, it was unfortunately time to pack up and head home to begin the work week. It's always so hard to come back to a desk after a weekend outdoors, but what an incredible Labor Day weekend! I loved every minute!

Beach bums.

I mostly have pictures of Colin, none of me, because I was the one with the camera.