This summer, my family and I spent a week in Cape Cod, Mass. We enjoyed touring around the historic lighthouses, wine tasting, shopping and of course watching some whales. We began our trip by stopping at a few lighthouses on our way up to colorful Provincetown, Mass. We were able to visit about four or five lighthouses before taking a much needed break for lunch in Provincetown. Our favorite was Highland Light, in North Truro.

My brother and I were able to climb up to the top of the lighthouse where we were given a short tour. We learned it was the first lighthouse on the Cape, although it no longer sits its original location. The lighthouse was lifted and moved to avoid beach erosion. The windows were also recently replaced with a stronger material to avoid damage from stray golf balls from the neighboring golf course. We then traveled to the very top of the Cape to check out Provincetown. Here we took in the colorfully decorated streets, and had lunch at The Central House Bar & Grille featuring menus prepared by executive chef — and Food Network Star contestant — Michele Ragussis. The fish and chips were lightly breaded and perfectly flaky. My mother had their creamy lobster mac and cheese. I am not a lobster fan myself, but I trust that it was delicious.
The highlight of our trip, however, was whale watching with Hyannis Whale Watcher Cruises. Not only did they have five stars and rave reviews on TripAdvisor, but they came highly recommended from my cousin who had an internship with them a few years ago to research whales. Once we boarded the ship our cruise director announced that the tour usually takes you to the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, where we would come across several whale and dolphin species, however the path for today’s cruise was slightly altered. The cruise director also announced that the day before a research vessel had seen a group of whales feeding in another area, so the captain decided to take a risk and bring us to this other location.
At the beginning of the trip we only got a glimpse of the spray from whale’s  blowholes that were farther out than our boat. We started to get a little discouraged that we wouldn’t get to see any up close. Thankfully within about 30-minutes after seeing the first few sprays and blows, two humpback whales swam right up next to our boat. The captain turned off the jets and let the whales swim under and around the boat. Their use of jets to propel their boats is more environmentally friendly than other alternatives, as well as safer for the whales. We were told the whales enjoy scratching their backs on the bottom of the boat — where else would they find a whale-sized back scratcher in the ocean? We were also informed that most of the whales had just finished eating when we reached them and that many of them were sleeping. We still found these sleepy whales to be magnificent, and in total, we saw about 30 humpbacks.

The rest of our stay was spent exploring the Cape. We saw a glass blowing demonstration at the historic Sandwich Glass Museum, enjoyed a wine tasting and took a tour of the Truro Vineyards, shopped around in Hyannis and hopped over to Nantucket Island for a day. In a week, we were able to see a lot of what the Cape had to offer, and still managed to have a lot of downtime for a very relaxing vacation. We all had a “whaley” good time and I can’t wait to see where we’ll go next! — Amanda Ekstrand, intern