We had rain overnight and quite a bit. In fact, it started to rain heavily about 9:00 last night and continued past the time I went to bed at 10:00. This morning, however, the sun was out and it was going to be a warm day in the upper 80’s. We did our morning routine and got ready to take a bike ride along the bike path. We had to take a 10 minute drive to the head of the trail at the Tidal Flats Recreation Area. The drive took us through the town of Monument Beach where they had a great marina and town beach.
Once we got to the head of the trail, we parked the truck and assembled our bikes. We started our ride at 9:45 at the foot of the Cape Cod Canal RR bridge.
It is such a beautiful structure build by the Corps of Engineers in the early 1900’s. I love the cone tops on each end of the bridge. It was used heavily during WWII and is still used today to haul trash to the landfill across the canal.
The bike trail parallels the Cape Cod Canal for 7 miles on a level, paved path. Today it was shaded through most of our ride.
The Cape Cod Canal is an artificial waterway traversing the narrow neck of land that joins Cape Cod to the mainland of MA. The entire canal is 17.4 miles long, but only 7 miles are cut through the land. It connects Cape Cod Bay on the north to Buzzard’s Bay on the south. It shortens the route from New York to Boston by 62 miles.
It is spanned by the Cape Cod Canal RR bridge and 2 highway bridges….the Bourne Bridge and Sagamore Bridge.
There are traffic lights at the ends of the canal to control the approach of vessels over 65 ft. There was quite a bit of boat traffic today going in both directions. However, more boats were going out with the tidal current which was quite strong.
I’m sure the sailboats watched the tide times and chose their departure time based on that. Boats that were going against the current were not making any headway fast. We rode the entire 7 miles to Sagamore and the Sagamore Bridge.
There we found a small marina with boats of all kinds tied to the docks.
We took a bathroom break and rested a bit while checking out the map of the trail.
The ride back was just as easy and quite a few walkers, roller bladers, and bikers were taking advantage of this beautiful day.
Under the Sagamore Bridge we noticed the Coast Guide was doing a “man overboard” practice drill. They blew their horn 5 times and threw a life sized dummy off the boat with a life jacket on. The current was so swift under the bridge that the Coast Guard cutter had difficulty maneuvering back to the body going against the current.
They were finally able to power up and retrieve the body (after the boat almost ran it over). Yikes! I think they need more practice. They also had to go back and retrieve the life ring that they through out to the man overboard. All in all, it was our entertainment for a few minutes.
We took a seat on a shaded bench to rest and wait for the Canal Cruise boat come up the river. We could hear the announcer explain the history of the canal.
We passed the Aptucxet Trading Post and Museum about halfway along the trail. William Bradford established the trading post of Aptucxet in 1627.
We were back at our starting point about 12:00 and packed up to return to the campground by 12:20. We took a shortcut back which took us through the town of Bourne. There wasn’t much there.
We stopped for a sandwich at McDonald’s before filling up with gas for our trip tomorrow. We were back at the campsite at 1:00. After a short rest, Bob washed the RV on the outside while I tidied up on the inside. The trailer sure needed it! We were able to relax in the shade for the rest of the afternoon. Auggie got a trip to the dog park which he enjoyed. He’s going to miss his visits to the dog parks on this trip. No dog parks close by at home. We cooked dinner and tried to get the Packers on TV, but no luck. Tomorrow we want to get an early start, so we’ll call it a night after the news. We enjoyed our stay on Cape Cod and have some great memories to take with us.
