Whale-walk... Kind of.

Today, the kids (minus the baby) and I went for a walk out to Great Island in Wellfleet. Two right whales had been spotted offshore earlier this week and I thought maybe we might see them if they came in close enough. I always though it was too shallow in there, but last week a small finback whale was IN Wellfleet harbor and later got stranded on one of the bay beaches just to the south. So, I guess they do come in there. Anyway, off we drove to Great Island as the snow cover melted and the temperatures rose.

We parked at the trailhead and hustled downhill through the short evergreen path, still covered with about 2 inches of very wet snow, to point at which it met the water. It was just the turn-of -tides, at a very high tide, and the path from this point, continued UNDER water and sea-ice-slush that had been pushed up by the south wind. The trail, although under water, was marked by a split-rail fence and we could see that it hugged the shoreline all the way around the cove out to the distant dunes that made up the causeway out to Great Island (which isn't really an Island). So, figuring we'd have the path on the way back, we too, hugged the shoreline and marched out along a single-file "bushwhacked" path of trodden salt marsh hay mixed with ice and snow, bordered to the left by water and to our right by the steep brambly banks of the hill we had just descended. The hay gave way to sand as we approached the dunes, and finally, we met up with the other end of trail as it ascended out of the shlushy retreating tide.

Just beyond this point the trail took a turn through a cut in the dunes and we found ourselves on Cape Cod Bay. The sun had come out, it was 50 degrees, and we had the entire beach to ourselves. Someone had built a driftwood "hut" just to the north of us, that captured the interest of the kids. It was a sculpture that seemed to have many hands that worked on it, and was in many ways, still a work in progress. We ended up spending a good deal of time in and around it and we even collected some of our OWN driftwood, and added it to the sculpture. We flopped on the dunes and threw big stones into the quicksand of the soft sea ice that was being pushed up on the shore. There were shells to be collected and castaway buoys to be inspected.

Once the kids had had enough of the thing and it's surroundings, we turned back south again to continue our walk. But, by now, the littlest was tired and the oldest was "bored" of walking, so we cut our trip short and headed back down the path that we started on. The tide had gone out... WAY out, and we had the real trail to walk back on. Still, it was covered with chunks of slushy sea ice, but each chunk sat solidly on the dry sandy trail below. The kids had a blast hopping from chunk to chunk and crushing through some of the smaller ones as they landed. A short hike, but a good one just the same... oh yeah, and as for whales... I looked to the horizon occasionally, but never saw any spouts. I'll look again in a couple weeks.