Best (family) vacation ever

We just got back from two weeks in Cape Cod. It was in a house right on Skaket Beach in Orleans, MA. For the record, our vacation house was here.

Part of the reason the vacation was great was that we did two weeks. I have so rarely taken a two week vacation, it’s really way better. But the main reason was location, location, location.

Our backyard was literally the beach. We had our own private beach right next to the public beach. We could have breakfast and walk out to the beach. The place we rented was a bit bigger than we needed. So we took the opportunity to invite people to join us. We arrived on Sunday. On Monday, my wife’s sister Abby, her husband Jim, sons Michael and Matthew and Michael’s girlfriend Sandy showed up. Michael will be a junior in college and Matthew is a sophomore in high school. So the “kids” were really pretty old which made the overall grown-up to kid ratio quite favorable. That made things easy.

One night we went bowling, only it turned out to be Candlepin bowling. I had never heard of it before, but it was quite fun and very good for Danielle because the balls are much smaller (Victoria was asleep).

They all had to leave on Thursday to get Michael and Sandy back to college. On Friday a friend of my wife’s came and stayed until Monday. Those were the quietest days. Then on Tuesday some friends of ours came with their 3 year old twins (boy and girl). Plus they brought up Danielle’s best friend. Suddenly the grown-up to kid ratio dropped below 1. Zone defense time. But it was big fun. The kids played together well.

And the star attraction was the beach. There are tons of beaches in Cape Cod, but we never went to another one. Why would we? Skaket Beach is on the bay side which makes it warm. It is very shallow with lots of sand bars. This is ideal for kids. It has huge variation from the tides. And you get a great sunset every night.

I might as well start posting pictures. That’s where this blog was headed from the start. This is the first morning we were there. Danielle is still in her PJs. That’s our deck and that’s our beach before anyone shows up.

This one is a bit later that same morning. I’ve just finished a run on the beach and Danielle and Victoria are digging. Tori is still in her PJs.

These pictures try to capture the effect of the tides. The first picture is at low tide. You can see the bands of sand bars and how shallow it is. You can walk about a mile straight out.

But a couple of hours later the tide starts in. Here it is at about the halfway point.

And here is the tide nearly full. If you want to really swim, you need to wait for high tide.

But low tide is great for catching minnows and hermit crabs. You see all the kids out there with their nets. Here is Danielle and her friend Kenzie holding some tiny hermit crabs (you can really only see the shells). We probably caught about 100 tiny crabs and 100 tiny minnows over the vacation.

And any time is good for playing in the sand. There was plenty of digging (Victoria was generally a hazard with the shovel).

There was plenty of burying:

Our place had WiFi so you could take a break on the deck and play some games online.

We did get out a few times. There was a “Zooquarium” nearby that was good for the kids. It included pony rides:

And one day we went to Provincetown, which is a cool and amusing town on the tip of Cape Cod. After a nice dinner

we took a walk and found a street musician (if you haven’t been to P-town, as it is known, it is very artsy) and Victoria had to dance.

The funny thing is that I know I blogged the last time we went to Cape Cod and P-town about two years ago and there’s a very similar picture of Danielle.

And of course, there were sunsets. Lots of sunsets. In general I don’t like sunset pictures because they never look as good on film (unless you’re a pro). You usually end up saying, “but it was even more beautiful”. So with that caveat, here are the pictures, ending with my favorite one (OK, it isn’t the sunset that I think is beautiful).

So there you have it. A simply fantastic family vacation…