If you saw yesterday’s post, you might have guessed that TWH crew went on vacation last week.

We spent week in Truro, MA with my family and it was a blast. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Cape Cod geography, Truro is way the heck down there, almost at the very tip of the Cape.

It’s a little tougher to get to the outer Cape because the highway gets whittled down to one lane, so you’re at the mercy of the person in front of you and it can turn into an all-day traffic extravaganza. Luckily everyone who hit the road on Saturday morning seemed to be on the same page because we cruised right down to the house that my parents had rented.

We had stayed in the same house last year and we loved it; the location is perfect and it has an incredible view of the beach and the lovely sunsets that Truro has to offer. We must have behaved ourselves adequately last year because my parents were nice enough to invite their children, their children’s significant others and even their children’s pets for the week (my sister’s cat Perkins declined the invite…something about there being too many hounds for his liking).

Brody and my brother’s dog Riley were pumped for a vaca and they had a total blast running on the beach and swimming in the ocean. And maybe eating crabs when the opportunity presented itself.  The Cape (and even Truro specifically) has gotten some publicity this summer due to some large and in-charge visitors, so I was a little nervous about letting B swim for fear of him befriending a shark and leaving us forever (or something like that). We spent our time on the bay-side of the Cape where sharks are naught to visit, though, so Brody and Riley were able to swim to their heart’s content.

  

There were a couple of times when kayakers would come paddling excitedly towards us, only to have their dreams crushed when they realized that B was a hound and not a seal. They didn’t even try to hide their disappointment. I wondered if they thought that it was odd that a person would be throwing a tennis ball for a seal, but I figured I wouldn’t add salt to the wound by asking them.

But to be fair, I can see how they would have been mistaken.

My brother brought his inflatable boat so we spent some time cruising around, creeping on the ridiculous waterfront houses and looking for real seals (instead of those goofy fake houndseals). The houses were set way up on the dunes and had loooong staircases to get down to the beach. Some were so long that they couldn’t even continue straight down so they had to zig-zag down the dunes. We talked about what it would be like to get to the bottom of the mile-long staircase only to realize that you forgot your book at the  house; I decided that it was a problem that I could handle.

My dad and brother even managed to barter with some generous lobstermen when they were at the marina on our first day and walked away one beer poorer and 7 lobsters richer.

Seems like a fair trade, huh?

We spent a couple of afternoons in Provincetown, where we discovered some salted caramel chocolate covered pretzel ice cream that I will think about every day for the rest of my life, and spent the rest of the afternoons on the beach.

I managed to drag myself out for a few runs, which were mainly fueled by my love of creeping on beautiful dune-perched beach houses (of which Truro has plenty) and also by the thought of how many Dark n’ Stormies I was consuming. It was a bittersweet area for jogging, though – it’s very hilly but there’s so much to look at that I found myself not minding the hills nearly as much as I normally would (which is to say, very much).

We did some fishing and let me tell you, we could have opened a sushi shop with our haul.

No, not because of the fish – we didn’t actually catch any of those – but because of the seaweed. We caught about 5 tons of it. So sorry to anyone who heads down the Cape lookin’ for some seaweed, we already got it all.

Some might argue that had we concentrated more on fishing and less on lounging around, we might have been more successful.  To them I say: quiet, lounging around is very important work and is pretty much mandatory whilst on vacation.

We did some other really important and strenuous stuff like set new Olympic and world records in paddle ball and my mom took home the medal in sea glass hunting.

It was such a fun and relaxing week and we were all sad to leave. Especially Brody, who we think would like us to flood the first floor of our house so that he  can live part time as an aquatic animal.

We’re considering it, because I think he would look really dapper in goggles.

I hope everyone had a great weekend!