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Monday
We drove to Falmouth, birthplace of Katherine Lee Bates who wrote America the Beautiful on Pikes Peak, and found the ferry terminal for Martha’s Vineyard. We rode the MV Nantucket across the sound and docked at Oak Bluffs just after 10:00.
After dropping our luggage at the Madison Inn, we took a bus tour of the island. The first celebrity name drop was Peter Norton at 87 Ocean Avenue, a house renovated in the 90s by Bob Vila and featured on his show.
Steven Spielberg filmed almost all of Jaws on Martha’s Vineyard, in Edgartown. This was the home of the island’s whale ship captains in the 1800s. Foremost among them was Valentine Pease, who once took Herman Melville out on a voyage.
Vincent House is the oldest on the island, built in 1672.
The permanent population of Martha’s Vineyard is 16,000 and it grows to 130,000 in the summer. The crush of people is so dense that cruise ships are forbidden to dock in July and August. A lot of the visitors are day trippers, however, and disappear at a quarter to five when the last ferry leaves.
MV sits atop a natural aquifer and has 150 fresh water springs and creeks that are replenished by rainfall. Most of the island, however, is considered dry–Edgartown and Oak Bluffs are the.JPG)
only towns that permit liquor sales. Restaurants in the other villages are BYOB.
The west side, "up island," is mostly agricultural. Don’t think, though, that you can just come in and buy land and start farming. David McCulloch, Walter Cronkite and Carly Simon are some of the people who can afford to buy Martha’s Vineyard farms.
Under Massachusetts law, beachfront property ownership is recognized to the low tide line so most of the Vineyard’s beaches are off limits to the public. Of 120 miles of coast line, more than 100 are privately owned.
After the tour, we walked around Oak Bluffs in and out of gift shops. Most were fixing to close for the season so they had specials on shot glasses and coffee cups and you could get a T shirt for two dollars.
We had dinner at Sharky’s and curled up in our bed afterwards listening to rain drops on the roof.
Tuesday
A 7:00 bus took us to Vineyard Haven where we boarded the trash boat, an unscheduled freighter that provides the earliest possible ride back to the mainland. We shared the boat with a garbage truck and a livestock trailer that was full of angry bull.
We chatted with a golf pro who manages a country club on the island whose membership fee is $350,000. He was on his way to his other job in West Palm Beach where he works seven months of the year..JPG)
We spent the rest of the day on Cape Cod driving to Provincetown, the first landing point of the Pilgrims. Someone has erected a 252-foot Pilgrim Memorial tower on a hill in the middle of town. I circled the parking lot and took a picture without having to get out of the car.
We stopped at the Cape Cod Lighthouse in Truro. It was jacked up and moved in 1996 to get back from the eroding cliff but it is still in Truro.
We drove to Falmouth, birthplace of Katherine Lee Bates who wrote America the Beautiful on Pikes Peak, and found the ferry terminal for Martha’s Vineyard. We rode the MV Nantucket across the sound and docked at Oak Bluffs just after 10:00.
After dropping our luggage at the Madison Inn, we took a bus tour of the island. The first celebrity name drop was Peter Norton at 87 Ocean Avenue, a house renovated in the 90s by Bob Vila and featured on his show.
Steven Spielberg filmed almost all of Jaws on Martha’s Vineyard, in Edgartown. This was the home of the island’s whale ship captains in the 1800s. Foremost among them was Valentine Pease, who once took Herman Melville out on a voyage.
Vincent House is the oldest on the island, built in 1672.
The permanent population of Martha’s Vineyard is 16,000 and it grows to 130,000 in the summer. The crush of people is so dense that cruise ships are forbidden to dock in July and August. A lot of the visitors are day trippers, however, and disappear at a quarter to five when the last ferry leaves.
MV sits atop a natural aquifer and has 150 fresh water springs and creeks that are replenished by rainfall. Most of the island, however, is considered dry–Edgartown and Oak Bluffs are the
.JPG)
only towns that permit liquor sales. Restaurants in the other villages are BYOB.The west side, "up island," is mostly agricultural. Don’t think, though, that you can just come in and buy land and start farming. David McCulloch, Walter Cronkite and Carly Simon are some of the people who can afford to buy Martha’s Vineyard farms.
Under Massachusetts law, beachfront property ownership is recognized to the low tide line so most of the Vineyard’s beaches are off limits to the public. Of 120 miles of coast line, more than 100 are privately owned.
After the tour, we walked around Oak Bluffs in and out of gift shops. Most were fixing to close for the season so they had specials on shot glasses and coffee cups and you could get a T shirt for two dollars.
We had dinner at Sharky’s and curled up in our bed afterwards listening to rain drops on the roof.
Tuesday
A 7:00 bus took us to Vineyard Haven where we boarded the trash boat, an unscheduled freighter that provides the earliest possible ride back to the mainland. We shared the boat with a garbage truck and a livestock trailer that was full of angry bull.
We chatted with a golf pro who manages a country club on the island whose membership fee is $350,000. He was on his way to his other job in West Palm Beach where he works seven months of the year.
.JPG)
We spent the rest of the day on Cape Cod driving to Provincetown, the first landing point of the Pilgrims. Someone has erected a 252-foot Pilgrim Memorial tower on a hill in the middle of town. I circled the parking lot and took a picture without having to get out of the car.
We stopped at the Cape Cod Lighthouse in Truro. It was jacked up and moved in 1996 to get back from the eroding cliff but it is still in Truro.
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