Probably my primary reason for this mid-spring trip to New
England is a timeshare trade week in Provincetown . As often seems to happen to
me despite the great amount of time I seem to have to travel, I often find
myself at a “use-it-or-lose-it” situation with timeshare weeks I own in
Breckenridge that I’ve deposited for exchange and trading. I was getting to
another such situation by the end of May so figured it would make sense to take
a trip somewhere where I could use it. I considered places in the Southeast as
possibilities, but when an exchange week in Provincetown for early May popped
up as available on the Interval International trading site, I figured I’d grab
it. Although I know better than to expect early May on Cape Cod is ever going
to be beach weather, the remote location in a quiet shoulder season made it an
appealing destination to me, more so for example than other places nearer in on
the Cape which were also available.

I’ve been to Provincetown a couple times before on family
trips in the 1980s and early 2000s, but it was more for the novelty of driving
to the end of Cape Cod and going to the beach for a day than as a destination
in itself. In 2008 I accepted a vague invitation to meet up with an online pen
pal who was hosting some friends at a shared house they rented on a crowded
summer week, although I didn’t pay into the house or stay at the house. In
fact, I stayed at a campground in Truro. My few days there didn’t go very well,
and I guess I’ve been quite turned off by the whole Provincetown summer “scene”
ever since from the less than pleasant experience . In May, though, when there’s
no one around and it’s not a constant parade of queens on Commercial Street, I
expect it to be an entirely different place.

And it is! In early May Provincetown is still virtually
empty and dead. In fact, most of the restaurants aren’t even open yet, I
discovered, or only have short hours on weekends and one or two weeknights.
That’s OK with me, though. I hadn’t planned to go out on the town and eat out
much.

I did hope to enjoy the great outdoors on the Cape, though.
I know that Cape Cod stays cold well into the spring because of its situation
so far out in the cold Atlantic, but I’m a he-man and very cold tolerant. The
weather had other plans, though. It is one thing to get outside when it’s sunny
but chilly, quite another to do so when it’s raining. And it rained for the
better part of five of the six full days I had in Provincetown.

So what do you do when it’s raining? One is to go to the
gym, and I did get a week’s gym membership at Provincetown Gym, which seems to
be the biggest in town . But by the standards of big chain gyms in suburban locations,
it was pretty small scale. That’s not to say the equipment was inadequate, but
I find a small gym to get a little claustrophobic. I quickly tired of it after
a few days and didn’t miss it too much for my last few days in town when I used
the cold I somehow caught as an excuse not to keep going. I actually blame my
cold on the gym being too hot resulting in my getting drenched in sweat and
ultimately chilled and immune resistance lowered.

I didn’t get to check into my timeshare until Saturday
evening but fortunately arrived in P-Town first thing on Saturday morning for
what turned out to be an absolutely stunningly clear and beautiful day. I’d
have been bummed if I didn’t get at least one such day to explore the town and
the Pilgrim Monument and drive out to some of the beaches. The tower of the
Pilgrim Monument near Provincetown’s center looks a lot like some of the medieval
city towers in Tuscany, particularly the one in Siena, and is about 350 feet high .
And you have to walk up in what starts out as stairs but becomes a ramp with a
step or two at each corner for most of the ascent. But the view was so crystal
clear on the bright afternoon I could see all the way to Boston in one
direction……and all the way to Lisbon in the other. Well, not quite. As a friend
pointed out, the Azores are in the middle of the Atlantic and block the direct
view to Lisbon to the east. One of the things that’s stunning from the top is
the grand sweep of Cape Cod and the elegant shape of its tip or fist that seems
to circle all the way around to Long Point Light. And the beaches look
gorgeous!

As well as the Pilgrim Monument and its associated museum, I
spent the rest of the day exploring the town. It was quite quiet even on a
sunny Saturday afternoon. I guess the direct ferries from Boston don’t start up
until closer to Memorial Day, but there were still boats going out on whale
watching expeditions a few times through the day. Boston is only about 40 miles
as the crow flies from Provincetown, but the huge arc of the Cape creates a
trip of well over 100 miles by road. Overall, P-Town is very quaint in the off-season,
a totally different story from the Carnival week when I was there in August
2008 when every day seemed to be Gay Pride day with a drag queen parade down
Commercial Street.

Provincetown has a quite long and unique history. The
Pilgrim Monument is located in town because it was the Pilgrim’s first landing
when they arrived in 1620, although they found the soil to sandy and quickly
moved on to Plymouth on more fertile and hospitable ground . In the 1700s it
vied with Nantucket as America’s premier whaling port, and eventually became
home to a large Portuguese settlement affiliated with whaling and fishing
industries. And then it became an artist colony and eventually got known as the
gayest summer resort in the country. The demographic stats of the place,
though, are unique. I read an article recently on how the year-round population
keeps diminishing rapidly as ever more properties are owned by out-of-towners
and used only during the summer. Many of those who consider the town their
primary residence leave for warmer climates like Fort Lauderdale for much of
the year, and the age structure of the population for most of the year looks
almost like that of a retirement community with virtually no children. If it
was still fairly dead in early May, I can only imagine how dreary Provincetown
must be in January and February. Some people might think, “Oh, it must be so
cool to live in a resort like that!” but despite the natural beauty of Cape Cod
I could not see living in Provincetown or elsewhere on the Cape . In fact, I’m
not sure if I could even see spending a summer vacation week there.

Why? It’s just too happening for me. My accommodation was on
the eastern edge of town a bit too far to walk comfortably (over a mile) into
the town center, but the posted weekly rental rates for my very modest unit
were as high as $3,500 for especially popular weeks like Fourth of July, Bear
Week, and Carnival Week. Over $3K for a studio with a Murphy bed that doesn’t
even have a dishwasher? You’ve got to be joking! Of course, it didn’t cost me
anything for my week above the trading fee, and I made good use of the hot tub
on my chilly week there.

The only other somewhat promising day in terms of weather
was Friday, the day before I had to vacate the premises. It was cool and breezy
with a mix of sun and clouds, but at least no rain. I explored farther south on
the Cape but did go to some of the locations of Cape Cod national Seashore in
the immediate Provincetown vicinity, including Race Point at the far northwest
trip of the peninsula and nearby Province Lands Visitor Center . But if I
thought P-Town along sheltered Cape Cod Bay was chilly, the winds around Race
Point and the open Atlantic a few miles away were brutally cold. No, I won’t be
taking a long beach walk today even if it isn’t raining.