Yesterday, I ate some chowdah.

One of my favorite things here are the accents. But I don't like the accents as much as the whales we saw the other day.

Wait. Whales?

Yes, whales. Humpback whales and finback whales, which are the second largest creatures on the earth. Yup, I saw three of them. They were beautiful. The finback whales are also called the greyhounds of the sea; they are slick and fast. They can go 25 knots, which I have no idea what that means. Not even Ginny could tell me.

Anyways, so I am here on Cape Cod. We are in Upper Cape, which is really the bicep of the Cape Cod arm and south of the rest of the Cape. Hyannis, MA Cape Cod to be exact. Wednesday we went to the National Seashore where the water is about 60 degrees and the weather was one of the hottest days here, 100 degrees and the water took our breath away. Literally. We would bake in the sun a little bit, run into the water (all right, tip toe gingerly while sucking in our breath) and then submerge a couple of times and then run back to our towels to bake again.

The hard life.

Thursday we went to Nickerson State Park and the salt marshes, a playground of ponds, beaches and forests where one could almost see a little Ginny running around in when she was just a wee lass.

Friday we went to Provincetown for some whale watching. P'town (as the locals call it) is at the very tip of the cape and was officially the first landing site for the pilgrims. This is also where the boats launch from on whale watching excursions, the same boats Ginny used to work on. I can see now why Ginny loves the ocean, the boats and the marine life so much. Seeing whales has to be one of the best experiences I have had yet.

We saw 8 humpback whales with countless fluke sightings (where you can see their tail as they are diving under), one feeding (where a whale comes up through the water head first, mouth open, eating fish), a couple of fluke fishing (where they slap their tail on the surface to stun the fish before eating) and one breach (where the whale actually jumps a little out of the water).

Wow.

Humpback whales rarely swim together in pods, they are mainly solitary creatures. They do come together and use teamwork to fish and feed however. At one time there were three of them swimming side by side and parallel to the boat. A fourth one lagged behind. The one closest to the boat started to turn towards us and slowly approached the boat and then dove underneath the boat, you could hear everybody on board suck in their breath as this massive creature approached.

The rest of the day we spent exploring Ptown which is probably one of the most liberal cities in New England. This is the town where most gay and lesbian couples came to get married when Mass legalized it a couple of years back. There was one street that reminded me a lot of New Orleans. It was narrow and the pedestrians walked as they pleased in the middle of the road. There were shops of all sorts and pubs lining the road. There were people of all sorts walking about enjoying the cool weather. It was marvelous. I got some Christmas shopping done and bought a cool necklace for myself. I love vacations.

Yesterday was a little quieter for us as we ran some errands in the morning and then hung out at the beach near Ginny's cottage. It was in the 80s and last night I had to wear my new sweater jacket I purchased for this trip. It was lovely.

I am almost ready to come home though. I miss my husband and I miss our dog. I miss my friends and oddly enough, I miss work a bit. I think only partially due to the fact that I got the supervisor job I interviewed for before I left.

But it has been great here. The weather, the beach, the pine trees, getting to meet Ginny's family (which explains a lot about a person) and getting to relax in general.

And the seafood, did I mention the seafood? Breakfast lunch and dinner. I am kidding, only lunch and dinner. I have had haddock, cod (called scrod here), blue fish, lobster and clams. My stomach has been upholding pretty well considering the mass amounts of protein I am putting in it everyday.

Tomorrow we leave the Cape, arrive in Virginia and rest. Then Tuesday we start packing Ginny up, hang out with some of her friends and then we start the journey to Texas on Wednesday morning. We should be home around Saturday or Sunday depending what route we take.

Ann, I am not lazy. Just on vacation. Also, if anyone asks about me or when I should be coming home, send them to this site.

Good news, though, eh? Tomorrow should be 88 in Austin? Is that right or did the newspaper I was reading start smoking crack?

Love,
Michelle