After finishing up my conference in Chicago, I flew to Boston and headed out to Cape Cod where my sister and her family had rented a house for the week. I had mentioned I had a lot of vacation time to use by the end of June so she said why don’t you come to the Cape. We have plenty of room, and indeed they did. It worked out well for the rotating cast of my brother-in-law’s family who came in for a day or two from Boston while I was there.

My nieces are 8 and 5 now. It was good to see them since it had been six months since the last time I had seen them. They had lots of cousins coming in and out to play with though, so Aunt Danielle was much less interesting.

The house was really nice. It was about a half mile walk to the beach, which was a little farther than one might have wanted especially with kids but it worked out okay. I didn’t mind the walk and the kids were mostly troopers about it. We didn’t really wind up spending that much time on the beach anyway as it was chilly. The temperatures were only in the low 70s and with the strong sea breeze blowing in on us it was cold to sit out there. We never spent more than two hours down there on a given day and most days we were only out there for about an hour. This is why I don’t normally take beach vacations in New England.

One morning we also went on a seal cruise on the Monomoy Ferry. That was very cool in all senses of that word. We got to see a lot of seals and our guide was very informative. I learned a lot about seals, sharks, and the way the coastline changes in that area according to a specific pattern.

We were staying in Chatham, so a couple of days we went into the downtown area and walked around the shops on Main Street and let the kids play on the playground down there. It was a cute little area full of things I’m too poor to buy. I looked at one dress I liked and immediately put it right back on the rack when I saw the price tag reading $268.

We also went mini-golfing one afternoon. I am decidedly terrible at mini-golf, but I love it. I don’t do it nearly enough. It’s been years since the last time I went.

I also enjoyed our delicious seafood dinners with seafood from the fish market in town. We had some great salmon, halibut, shrimp, scallops, and of course lobster over the course of the four days I was there. I wish we had a really great place to buy seafood. I usually wind up getting it at Whole Foods for a billion dollars.

It was a lovely trip and much better than going to roast in Arizona to see my sister and family in June like I normally do.