TEXAS RANGER: Provincetown, MA August 26

Our Houston visitors had thoroughly toured and enjoyed Plymouth, and wanted to travel on the boat. We had considered moving on south through the Cape Cod Canal, but that would create the problem of retrieving their rental car for the return to Boston upon departure, so we decided to cruise across Cape Cod Bay to Provincetown and see the "toe of the boot". There is a very tall Pilgrim Monument there, since Provincetown is where the 1620 travelers first landed in early November. They were headed for northern Virginia, which was the location of the land granted them by their charter, but were unable to make headway around Cape Cod, and so returned to Provincetown. The Cape, however, was too narrow and without adequate fresh water, so they went in search of a better place to establish a colony, and then settled on Plymouth later in the month. Since their charter did not cover that area, the laws would not have effect, and so they created and agreed to what we now call the Mayflower Compact as an agreement of governance to be in effect until the King issued a new charter for their actual location.
We certainly hoped to see whales on our way across to Provincetown, but did not, so after touring the Provincetown Harbor, we moved out around the tip of Cape Cod into the Atlantic Ocean in search of the largest mammals. We were rewarded on encountering a pod of large whales, and idled as we watched them surface, dive, flip their tails, etc. Then three of them headed towards us...curious, I suppose...but Kay was seeing them closer than she wished, and implored me to move the boat. I just idled along, however, and they diverted their course when they were about fifty yards away. The photos below do not begin to do justice to the experience, or to demonstrate the magnitude of these massive creatures. It was a "once in a lifetime experience" of a unique aspect of God's creation that most people never have opportunity to behold...we were truly blessed. The return trip across the bay was uneventful, and we docked again in Plymouth for our final evening together before the younger generations return to Houston. It has really been a special time together this week!