Well, what do you know?

/ June 17, 2015

It started with the desire to snap a picture of the pretty orange bushes.

What is this?
No, really, what is this?

Click on any gallery photo for a description. Click and hold on the photo to the right for an enlarged slide show.

So as our pre-tourist boom week in the Happy Cottage of Cape Cod wound to its close, we gently tugged Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle in the opposite direction than our usual route. After snapped the two stages of bloom so I can ask you good gardeners my usual what is that, we continued our exploring ways and turned right instead of left.

Oh, what we saw.

But please do pay.
It’s for sale.

There was an honor-honey stand next to a million-dollar house. The guy I presume to be the owner got done selling two five-buck jars and asked me if I wanted to buy his house as we walked past. No thank you, sir.

Is that what we think?

Is that what we think?

We made a couple more turns and then spotted a clearing at the end of a residential street.

Even Ellie B perked up at the smell of it.

Karen and I couldn’t believe we’d been coming here five years and this was our first whiff of what was a mile, and most, in this direction from the Happy Cottage.

Curve to the water.
Can’t hold Ellie B back.
Can you canoe?
Lucky life.
All I can say is, Yup.
Ripple effect.
I can see clearly now.
Shore enough.
Dog sense.
Shore leave.
Heaven sense.
Is that what we think?

A new Traditions List item had been discovered. By mistake.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever stumbled upon during a vacation, and why? What’s your favorite pond or lake, and why? Which is your favorite photo, and why?

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70 thoughts on “Well, what do you know?”

    • We did not buy any honey. I can’t eat it, and Karen said it looked like store bought anyway! Yeah, that house is pretty cool, Rachel, and Karen and Ellie do look pretty cute together in that one. 😉

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  4. Everybody is flattering, but I’ll tell the truth: you’re a menace with that camera, bub. A menace. How the hell am I supposed to get anything done now that I have to look at all these pictures. Get it under control, man. I’ve got things to do.

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  8. Cool. Treading the familiar paths is comforting so straying from the routine occasionally can bring such delights. I bypass the nearby marina to head just further down the coast for our regular sunday dog walks. Then one day I was carless and had to rely on public transport and the train took me straight to the marina I had ignored and suddenly I was introduced to a brand new vista of delights. so now we alternate.

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  10. Fantastic find bro Mark. I loved taking the road less graveled when I could travel. Back-roads, country roads, anything but the highways suit me best. Ditto travel by bus rather than flying or Amtrak. You see the sights most people miss. My fave pic is Karen and Ellie B up to their knees in the water. It looks so cool and peaceful. You should always make it a point to turn in the opposite direction from the crowd no matter where you are. Great treasures lie in undisclosed locations.

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      • That was actually the title of a book of poetry I had at one time bro Mark. Loved the title, and the accompanying poem by the same name, plus lots of the others, but the title sold me. I’ve used it several times since then, so hope the copy right is up. Another of my favorite titles is “If I Had Killed Him When I Met Him I’d Be Out Of Jail By Now”. Title and book didn’t match at all, but it “spoke” to me from the shelf anyway. Now you know the truth. My life is summed up by book titles.

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  12. The honor honey is my favorite picture, because I love honey, and I would like to stroll down the street to buy some! His house is adorable tho…
    I’ll share my discovery of water post for Labor Day-ish 🙂

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  13. Vacay-who has time for that??? Seriously for our 12th anniversary in April (this year) we went to Greece. The Acropolis/Parthenon had a great impact on me emotionally. Soon I recovered and realized it was built in 437 BC and the Goddess Athena was nowhere to be found. We hit the restaurant next. Yes really…

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  14. When I was married and actually could afford a vacation we used to go to the Outer Banks, NC a lot. I knew those islands like my own home town. One year while exploring around I located this hole in the wall cafe that served the best crab cake I’ve ever had. I still dream about them every day. Glad you found yourself a new tradition also, loving the photos!

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    • Finding local food that you can’t get at home is so much fun, Skippah. I didn’t post this year about our one trip to The Pancake Man, a breakfast joint in Cape Cod that makes the lightest, fluffiest, best-tasting pancakes I’ve had anywhere, any time. Hey, the Outer Banks seems to be a great place to get a crab cake. Loads of blue shells in those waters, I would imagine!

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  16. Vacation traditions – this is a first!! The one memory I have is of a bomb blast so not cool – but something that stands out.
    Otherwise I remember this moment when at 14000 feet we stumbled upon a mini stall selling hot instant noodles. Oh la la!!

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  21. Cool post Mark. I used to come across amazing stuff serendipitously all the time. Ha! I was running an illegal load from British Columbia to Toronto one July 4th weekend and decided to run to through the US – as the holiday would mean most of the highway scales and enforcement would be on vacation. I plotted my route to minimize exposure to scales,so I was out on the back roads of Washington state ,aiming for Spokane,when I crested a hill and came face to face with the Grand Coulee Dam.Holy Moly! One of the largest concrete structures in the world and one of the largest hydro-electric dams in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Grand_Coulee_Dam It was scary driving across that little steel bridge at the base of the dam.Whew.

    Another time, I had the family downtown NYC visiting the Statue of Liberty and the little girl had to use the bathroom. There was a club nearby and we took her in there. The concierge directed her to the women’s room and while we waited, I looked around the lobby. Lo and behold there sat the Heisman Trophy! It was the Manhattan Club where the trophy is kept off season. I couldn’t believe it- we had accidentally wandered into the Manhattan Club and were standing in front of the Heisman Trophy,entirely by luck. Amazing.

    Anyway,I’m not a stranger to serendipitous finds. Enjoyed the post and pictures Mark. ThankYou

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    • That is a scary drive and fantastic find, Paul. Wow. Very Grand Coulee, I’d say.

      And the Heisman Trophy by mistake would be a forever memory for me as well, what with Syracuse’s late and great Ernie Davis forever being the first African American player to win that honor. Five or so years back they made a big Hollywood production film of Ernie’s life, with a lot of on-scene filming here. I got to cover the world premiere at our local Landmark Theatre and watch celebrities walk in on the red carpet. Cheering locals gawked outside the ropes a la Tinsel Town, but I was inside the ropes, part of a teeming media pool. I felt as if that was serendipitous for me as well.

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  23. The tree looks like a Pink Dogwood from its leaves. How great to find a beach so close! There is a pond a short 10 minute walk from where I live that I visit most days. Great place to see wildlife and sit and take in nature

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  24. That is a nice house. A million bucks?! Yikes. Will have to sell a bunch of honey. I love those semi circular flag pennants. They always make me nostalgic.

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  25. If you like stumbling upon off the beaten path, try geocaching. On a vacation at Long Beach Island New Jersey I was going after a geocache on a portion of the island that I never saw. There was a huge abandoned bridge, canals that moved to the mainland and some of the biggest striped bass that I’ve ever fished for. Geocaching has taken me to breathtaking vistas, hikes to places I didn’t know existed, real ghost towns and caves deep in the earth.

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