The Elephant House

Went to Cape Cod for Memorial Day Weekend. I was so looking forward to a nice, quiet, relaxing get-away weekend, which is pretty much exactly what I got. We left pretty early in the morning and cracked ourselves up at our stopping not a quarter mile from the car rental place to get breakfast, then stopping 5 minutes later to get gas. We thought our starting pace was just hilarious. We finally get on the road and hit some traffic through Connecticut, but once we got to about where the outlet malls start, the roads cleared up. Of course that's when we had to make a rest stop. And of course that's when I accidentally bought a new Marc Jacobs tote. But then we hit the road again and flew past so many neat and adorable New England towns- we decided on our way home, we'd stop and explore a little.

We got to Sarah's Granny's house at about 6 pm- just early enough to take a walk through Woods Hole. The downtown is just one little street with some shops, restaurants, art galleries- it reminded me of the wharf in Santa Cruz minus the pelicans and sea lions. The weather was cool and there weren't really many people at all, which surprised me as I thought there would be people going to and from Martha's Vineyard. We ventured out to the private beach where only some of the home owners have rights- I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it was tiny and clean and empty. There's two little foot bridges to get to the beach that go over some frog ponds, and one pond was filled with hundreds of bullfrog tadpoles! The houses around Woods Hole are these amazing beach houses- some remind me so much of homes on West Cliff in Santa Cruz- huge and wooden with huge windows and porches. It's funny to me how nomatter where I go, it could almost be Anytown, USA. East Coast beach towns really aren't so different from West Coast beach towns... there are distinct differences, but the similarities out number them by far.

We got back to Granny's house and had dinner, then sat and talked and I knitted. Sarah's Granny is a fascinating woman. She grew up in Manhattan, right near Hunter College, in an actual house. She was telling us all kinds of stories about being a child in Manhattan and I started to get that thrilling love for New York feeling that just overtakes me entirely. I think Sarah got pretty excited again for New York- something she doesn't feel too often. We talked about going to find Granny's old house. Sarah's grandfather was an oceanographer and moved the family to Baltimore- I'm not sure if he did research at Johns Hopkins or where he was working- when I asked Sarah about it, she said, "He wasn't a doctor so he didn't work at Johns Hopkins. That's a hospital." The bookshelves in the Woods Hole house are filled with old hardcovers from before the fifties- and Granny has some impressives titles. There's so much art and education just pouring out of every crack in that house- it was inspiring and movtivating. Went to bed pretty early as we were exhausted from the drive- but only after sitting and listening to the Spring Peeper frogs for a while.

The next day, we got up and went for a drive out to Edward Gorey's house in Yarmouthport- about an hour drive from Woods Hole. It was a beautiful drive- tree lined with giant colonial houses popping out of the woods. The house is the Elephant House and I was so excited to just be there. I can't describe the feelling. I love Edward Gorey and everything he did and everything he collected- I'll never love someone I'll never be able to meet as much as I adore him.