Memories of Cape Cod

Travel writers like to push the exotic, and so they focus on far-away places where stimulating colors and flavors appeal to a sense of adventure. It rarely occurs to us that for 99 percent of the world’s population, our own hometowns can be intriguing travel destinations in themselves. In Boston, some of the world’s most fascinating scenes and sensations are right there under the visors of our Sox hats.

That becomes most apparent in the fall, in peak leaf-peeping season, and on Memorial Day, when Cape Cod and the islands kick off the summer season and tourists roll in with their plastic pails and shovels. Starting in mid-May, wide-eyed passengers take in the view of Boston Harbor from the sky, drive south along the pines trees of Route 3, past my hometown exit, and continue over the Sagamore Bridge toward the quaint cottages of the Cape.

My sisters and I would visit our aunt here frequently, in Chatham, Massachusetts, where thousands of other Northeasterners make their summer memories: strolling the quiet sand dunes of Hardings Beach, chewing on salt water taffy and absorbing the sounds of a Chatham A’s baseball game or of a big-band concert under the gazebo, boating out to Monomoy Island, fishing for blues and striped bass along Nantucket Sound, or whale watching in Provincetown.

All are elements of a perfect vacation that, as kids, we took as just another summer day.

Recently my West Coast cousins made the trip over to Chatham to relive some of those memories, this time with their own children in tow, literally. We rented bicycles at the old depot in Chatham, the parents’ bikes outfitted with little cabooses for the toddlers.

The old train track that ran from Boston to Provincetown - the only overland route to the Cape before the bridges were built in the 30s - were torn up and replaced with a paved path in the 70s that runs from Dennis to P-Town. In a place that attracts lots of cars in the summer, the trail is the best way to see the lower and outer Cape in the hot months.

Ice cream stops will be frequent on any cycling trip with kids, but, here, it might be the adults who ask to pull off at those same stands to dig into a basket of fried clams or an overstuffed lobster roll. In Wellfleet, it won’t be hard to find a place like that: a little wooden ice cream cone sign on the bike trail shows the way.

For me, a cone of soft-serve ice cream sprinkled with jimmies – as we like to call the little sprinkles in New England - encapsulates the essence of summer. For an older generation, it might be the drive-in movie theater that sits just up the road in Wellfleet. It is one of the last of its kind still operating in the state.

When we got home to the Oyster River, my aunt showed us a Polaroid she took back in 1978 when the six of us visited. She arranged us in the same pose and took a shot in more or less the same spot some 30 years later.

Surprisingly, the two photos didn’t look very different. A little less hair on some of the guys, to be sure, but the lobster boats were still moored there on the Oyster River framed by the same scrub pines and rose-hip bushes.

Change comes but slowly to these parts. While the outlying islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard have wrapped themselves in wealth and glitter beyond recognition, those who return to Chatham to find the faded shingles of the fishermans’ cottages of their youth will still find most of their fond memories intact.

Yes, expensive SUVs have long since replaced the battered old pick-up trucks and rental prices are now beyond the means of anyone making a living digging clams, but at least some customs of the place are sacred: They still throw their peanut shells on the floor at The Squire while watching a Red Sox game over a pint of Sam Adams. Every day, the cod fishermen still unload their haul in the steel bins of the town pier for anyone to see.

You’ll still see a few rusty hooks tucked into the side of baseball hats, the proud mark of a local. In reality, even a few non-locals tuck wear the hooks as well, if only just as a souvenir of another memorable summer by the Atlantic.

John Moretti is a freelance travel writer who divides his time between Europe, Florida and Vermont. He is the author of "Living Abroad in Italy" (Avalon, 2004) as well as a number of guidebooks. He writes about European sports and culture for the New York Sun.