A Five-Week Staycation at Our Cape Cod Home
For five weeks this summer, our house on Cape Cod operated like the air traffic control tower at Logan Airport, only with more beer, Cheez-Its, ice cream, and sunscreen.
Family arrived in shifts. Siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, and friends who claimed they were “just passing through.” Cars rotated through the driveway. Beach chairs vanished. Wet towels established permanent residency on every available railing. Opening the refrigerator required patience, timing, and occasionally an elbow.
A Cape Cod staycation is a wonderful idea until everyone you have ever met remembers you live on Cape Cod.
There was somewhere between the traffic, lobster rolls, and daily negotiations over which beach would be the most ‘dope’, I began seeing our Cape village of Orleans through their eyes.
Living somewhere beautiful can make you lazy. The bay becomes the bay, and the beach becomes the beach. You complain about summer traffic while barely noticing that thousands of people are sitting in that traffic because they desperately want to be where you already are.
Our visitors noticed everything. A harbor seal twenty yards offshore became breaking news. Ice cream was treated as a nightly obligation. A walk to the water required supplies, planning, and several beers in a cooler. Every sunset had a captive audience.
Our family and friends reminded me that Cape Cod is not just where we live. It is where other people save their vacation days to spend one week, and over time I learned to absorb that energy with each new visit.
Ted’s Top Five Things He Learned
Often you need to remind your family that they can’t just hand you a beer at 2:00 pm on a Tuesday when you’re on a work Zoom call.
Your nieces and nephews are excellent at pointing out bald spots and areas of flab on your body.
Apparently no one in New England knows how to drive through a roundabout! Here are some tips Massachusetts Roundabouts
Black Raspberry Ice Cream is the best on the planet… Period!
The odds of being eaten by one of our many Great White Sharks are 100 times less than being killed by a tourist in a roundabout.
Then everyone left, and our house became quiet. No towels on the railings. No extra cars in the driveway. No one asking, “Uncle Ted, why do you drink coffee? Why do you drink beer? Why do you have hair there but not there? Can we watch Bluey again? Why can’t we watch JAWS?”
The first few hours, the silence felt magnificent. By the next day, it felt suspicious. Five weeks of noise, laughter, sand on the floor and a refrigerator under constant attack had become one of the best parts of summer. I spend much of the year moving through airports, conferences, hotels and rental car counters. This time, I stayed put and let the trip come to me.
So this is not really a Travel With Ted story. Every summer, it becomes a Travel to Ted story.
I’m being honest with myself, next year, despite everything I just wrote, we will do it all again. Hellz yeah!
