Last Mini Vacation of the Summer

Paul and I took a long weekend to go to Cape Cod a couple of weekends ago (it's been a little busy around here, hence the delay in telling you about it...).  We love Cape Cod.  I've been going there since I was young and my parents had a little house there for many years.  There was knitting in the car....

This is my Tudor Henley which is now just about done - just the neck/button band to knit (4 rows) and sewing in the sleeves.  Ha!  I say "just".  These finishing parts are my nemesis.  It might take me weeks to do it.

We stayed in a somewhat-dated-but-still-quite-comfy motel in Orleans.
With. A. Gorgeous. Relaxing. View.....

Ahhhh.  Can't you just smell the salt air?  It was really nice.

Paddle boarding seems to be the thing these days so we saw many paddle by.  And one day we saw this:

It looked like the guy in the red shirt (who was paddling with a boy - over to the left of the picture, sitting on his board), had something else on his board.

I zoomed the camera in and, sure enough, he had company!:

Looked like a lot of work.  Right after this picture, they fell off!  Luckily they were all laughing.

We rode our bikes to the beach and did lots of relaxing and walking:

We also went to Chatham and walked around that cute little town.  We went to a bookstore, Where the Sidewalk Ends, which is, quite literally.... where the sidewalk ends:

See that? No more sidewalk across the driveway!

And I bought:
 
As I've told you, this is the author whom I went to high school with.  I'm reading it now and really enjoying it!  More about that when I'm finished reading it....  I was going to buy it for my Nook but when I saw that she had recently been to the shop and signed the copies they had (a bonus!), I decided to buy it in hard copy.

We also went to a couple of seafood restaurants.  We were completely underwhelmed.  I've seen these places the whole time I've been going to Orleans on vacation.  We actually didn't go to many of them, often cooking at the cottage.  One of them was the Lobster Claw and was your typical touristy seafood place, complete with gift shop:

My baked, stuffed shrimp was so-so and Paul couldn't find anything he liked so he had a turkey club!  (Neither of us is thrilled with lobster but we assumed the other stuff would be good....)

But we did have some great ice cream as well as some yummy baked goods from our favorite bakery, the Cottage Street Bakery.  They have these to-die-for muffins called Dirt Bombs.  They taste like a nutmeg-y plain donut, but it is in a muffin shape.  When the muffins come out of the oven THEY DIP THEM IN MELTED BUTTER and roll them in cinnamon and sugar.  Oh. My. Gosh.  SO. GOOD.

And, what do you know?  There was a new (to me) yarn shop just 1/4 mile down the road from the motel!

A Stitch in Thyme was a very nice shop.  I went in "to get a tape measure because i forgot the four other ones I have at home", but came out with:

Oooh.  They had such pretty yarns and a great sale shelf!  This picture makes the colors look not like the colors that they are.  Except maybe for the ball on the left.  The ball on the left is sock yarn from Viking.  Such pretty blues!  The two skeins in the middle are PediBoo from Frog Tree Hill.  Also sock yarn (I know... shocker).  The balls on the right are Charly by Filatura di Crosa.  Bulky wool-and-maybe-something-else yarn in a pretty, deep plum color.  And, of course, the Lantern Moon sock monkey tape measure which was more I wanted to spend on my fifth tape measure but couldn't resist because it was so cute.  It's my new go-to tape measures.  The others have taken a backseat.  Even the sheep one.

We also went to Rock Harbor to see the sunset:

I was willing to try to ignore all the people in the
picture since they were like shadows, but then there was
the bright, striped maxi dress lady....

It can get crowded there for sunsets because it's so pretty, so getting a good, non-people picture can be difficult without walking in front of everyone and practically into the water.  This one is better-ish....

So, we had a nice, relaxing time and really wished we had decided to stay longer.  We are already booking to go back next year so we are assured of our nice view!

More next time on what's been going on since then.... knitting, gardening, cooking, flooring.... ooh and two books! (maybe three if I finish The Next Best Thing)

In the meantime, Phoebe amongst the flooring tools: