Final Beach Bucket List

So many nice things today. Yet I'm in a melancholy mood, as I always am the day/night before leaving the Cape. I always come back, so you'd think I could skip the damp blanket. And I know I should be grateful for the brimming bucket of memory pearls I've collected in all my visits here. Some people will never get to come. But I just hate to leave this natural beauty. I long to see it every day.

On this Tuesday:

• Sis and I walked the Nauset Marsh Trail behind the Salt Pond Visitor Center. So pretty. We saw two big swans and tiny guppies, kayakers and tourists. And we popped into the center to check out the museum, which hasn't changed much in decades. Things that stay the same are comforting. The blue and white china tea set that belonged to the Pennimans, a famous whaling family whose home is in Fort Hill. A baby cradle, a bicycle, scrimshaw.
• Visited our friends Rite and Bob, on Quail Cover Lane. They've been married 63 years and moved [from New York] to the Cape full-time in the 1970s, after retiring. If it weren't for Rite and Bob, my parents wouldn't have had a cottage to rent in the 1960s. [And I took Sis driving on a dirt road by the windmill in the dark tonight to try to find their old cottage, but we couldn't find it, and at least one person thought we were stalkers.]
• Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary with Sis, H., Fig and Charlotte. Saw turtles, frogs, tadpoles, monarch butterfly, snowy egrets, a chipmunk, a bunny. And butterfly bushes, lily pads, trumpet flowers.
• Dinner @ Mac's in Wellfleet. I don't think I've ever seen a more striking sunset anywhere at any time. Streaks of turquoise behind a glowing palette of fiery oranges and pure white. In the distance: Great Island and Jeremy Point, rising behind the harbor.

Have to shake the sand out of my shoes tomorrow and head on home. Not happy about it. Talked on phone to my friend Anne tonight, who left with her family on Saturday. "Re-entry is hard," she said. "There's the Cape, and there's everywhere else." Exactly.

Good night, Mr. Sandman.

TCOY

1. The two walks, the fresh air, the views I tried to drink in and bottle up.
2. Nice shower and good tooth care.