With any cooperation at all from Mother Nature, we’ll soon have snow to play on, manmade on the ski slopes if nowhere else. Maybe we’ll even get snow before I can get around to raking the leaves, and I will be forced to postpone that chore until May.
For the past several years, my sweetheart Marilyn and I have headed to Cape Cod sometime in October, November, or early December for a total de-stressing.
You see, winter is only days away, and winter is not only my favorite season, it’s also my busiest. Even people who “play” for a living have to work, and I work all winter researching, writing, and editing stories about Alpine skiing,Nordic skiing, Winter Camping and Hiking, Snowshoeing, and other fun things for you to do/places for your to go.
For Marilyn and me, The Cape is our “secret” place to take a deep breath and clear our heads before the nuttiness of snow season and The Holidays begins. Actually, we take a lot of deep breaths while we’re on the Cape. Isn’t that the point of aerobic exercise?
The Cape in the off season is both reassuringly familiar and a marvelous place to play outdoors. We visit a different town each time, stay in different places, try different restaurants, and mix familiar fun with new adventures.
Here’s how one of our pre-winter Cape Escapes unfolded:
I’m writing this sitting in front of a brick fireplace in the Captain’s House Inn in Chatham, with a pot of absolutely marvelous, fresh-brewed tea and scones. That’s about as relaxed as I ever get unless I’m asleep.
We arrived on the Cape at the end of a pretty intense “rain event.” Good excuse to settle in for a leisurely lunch. As we ate, the rain stopped and the sun started poking through thinning clouds. Perfect.
So it was onto our tandem bike for a 12-mile-per-hour, almost- 4-hour ride on the 22 mile-long Cape Cod Rail Trail. In summer, you share this trail with hundreds and hundreds of fellow recreationists. At this time of year, you can fly on an almost-empty, nearly flat, beautifully paved right of way, past quiet lakes and cranberry bogs. The countryside was still aflame with the last of autumn’s colors. Just beautiful.
For those of you who aren’t exercise junkies, I have to tell you that there’s nothing quite like burning 1,000 or more (sometimes way more) calories in a single intense shot. It wakes up your body, gets all your systems operating at peak efficiency, clears your head, puts you in a good place to really relax once you stop moving. Your body hums for hours afterward on the endorphins you generate, and you sleep like you did when you were a kid.
No, you don’t get to eat more as a reward for pedaling all those miles, but you do get to eat well to refuel your body for the next day’s activities. If you happen to be in Chatham, I’d suggest searching out The Impudent Oyster for a particularly savory refueling session. Or, if you like good pub fare, try The Red Nun.
It’s hard to stop moving on the Cape, even if you are there to relax. There are bike trails and back roads everywhere to ride. In the off season you share the roads with fewer cars and you can pretty much pedal where you please without any stress.
Beaches that were wall-to-wall blankets and sunbathers in the summer are now deserted. Not just sort-of deserted, to be shared with a few other quiet seekers. At this time of year, you can feel like you’re the only human beings on the face of the earth as you walk on empty, expanses where sand meets sky and surf. Beautiful, great exercise, and very, very relaxing.
That’s the way it is on the Cape in the “off” season. Most of the shops and restaurants are closed, most of the tourists gone. But all the wonderful outdoor activities are still right there to be enjoyed, and you can do it at your own pace, then relax in front of a fireplace in the evening. Not a bad way to de-stress.
End-Of-Season Fun
When most people think of Cape Cod, they think of playing in or on water. Well, the water doesn’t go away when the tourists do. I’m more than a little obsessed with kayak touring , and the Cape has plenty of kayaking opportunities in the late fall. You just have to pick your days a little more carefully than you do in summer.
The second day of our Cape escape dawned warm and sunny—it felt like early September.
Stupidly, I hadn’t brought my own kayak. But I got lucky and connected with Julie Martin, manager of the Outdoor Center at the Goose Hummock Shop in Orleans. In summer, Julie teaches kayaking. Her shop offers rentals, instructions and guided tours. Though the center was officially closed, not only did she agree to rent me a beautiful Wilderness Systems “Zephyr” kayak, she decided to lock the door and come paddling with me.
We paddled out on Town Cove, headed through a cut behind Stony Island into Salt Pond Bay and out through Nauset Marsh to take a peek at the surf breaking in the cut between Coast Guard and Orleans Beaches.
It was a warm, sunny day, neither of us needed the Kokatat dry suits we wore in case the weather soured or we ended up swimming in the 55-degree water. But better safe than sorry—it can go from sunny and warm to cold and windy in a heartbeat at this time of year.
In three hours of paddling we saw only a handful of other boats on the water. Instead, our afternoon was filled with blues skies, thousands of seabirds, dozens of great blue herons, and an ominous cloudbank building out over the ocean.
Perfect day of paddling. If it’s my last of the season, I couldn’t have asked for better!
Carry Your Own Fun
Normally, you can rent whatever you need to play on the Cape, from bikes to kayaks, sailboards to surfboards. But at this time of year, you are much better off bringing your own.
Yes, it’s sometimes a hassle to tote your own gear, but if your bike is handy you can pedal early in the morning or later into the evening without having to worry about rental shop hours.
Ditto for kayaks. If Julie hadn’t happened to be in the shop and answer the phone, I’d have been out of luck for paddling on a glorious afternoon.
Word to the wise: be prepared to make your own fun on the Cape during the “off” season.
