Provincetown, Herring Cove Beach, Race Point Beach, Province Lands Trails

Deeem boys and girls; it's HOT, 熱,heet, chaud, heiß, καυτός, caldo, 熱い, 뜨거운, quente, горяче, caliente...etc. Get it? Oh man, the East Coast heatwave's in full effect and our Colorado bodies aren't used to it although we're tough like that and after all, we are on vacation. Can you say, "ozone alert?" I knew you could...
So kids it's off to Provincetown! Home of such distinguishing features as Herring Cover Beach, Race Point Beach, and the meandering and rolling hills of Province Lands Trails. Our M.O. of getting off to a late start is consistent and by the time we're off to rent mother in-law's Mongoose mountain bike, the sun is high overhead ready to radiate its powerful ultra-violet rays to our already leathery bodies due to overexposure. Provincetown is a colorful area. It's the Cape Cod version of San Francisco. One of P-town's mottoes are: Welcome to Provincetown: Where Gay Life is Everywhere. I'm not a card carrying member of the NRA, or Focus on the Family, or the Boy Scouts so I'm not homophobic just apathetic mostly. The vibe was cool, your typical beachy, pandering to the tourists kind of gig except in smaller doses.
The first thing on the agenda was to ride the 7 miles, of the steep and rolling Province Lands Trails: dunes, scrub oak, vistas, and the crucible of riding in sweltering heat was too much to pass up, so off we go! Pilgrim's Monument was there but we blew it off for riding and essential beach lounging. Since my five year-old son's riding a singlespeed, I ride next to him and push him on his back up the super steep stuff. This is like my interval workouts back home so I don't mind and like I said, we're tough like that. After many breaks and attempting to find a lighthouse off of Race Point Beach (to no avail), we end up at the overlook at the Ranger station. There was a flourishing forest here but the Pilgrims exhausted the flora (as well as some of the fauna) in order to colonize. So the forest are gone but you can see how the sand dunes provide the foundation.


We're hurting and Team M has just ridden 7 miles of steep, rolling blacktop so we're gonna stick our bodies in the Atlantic Ocean for heat transfering in the form of conduction. That place is Herring Cove. Look how clear the Atlantic is on this beach. The sand is hot and super rough so again it looks like we're walking on a bed of hot coals as we shuttle our bodies to and from the Atlantic from our towels on the beach. The water's pretty righteous feeling against our heat exhausted masses. Here're the kids blasting each other with bucket loads of water during a water fight. After the Pilgrims landed here in Provincetown Harbor they cruised across Cape Cod Bay and settled in Plymouth Rock. On our way out of Provincetown we drove through the colorful, downtown Commercial Street to head back to Chatham.