Tours of Cape Cod
Newly added to crowded bookstore travel sections about Cape Cod is a welcome and refreshingly candid offering by Cape resident Andrew G. Buckley titled Tours of Cape Cod.
Buckley’s book offers a no-frills and no-fluff approach to exploring the Cape, and offers a fitting style and tone to the Cape’s low key and simple charm. The book is as much a color photo tour of the Cape as it is a written guide to wonderful days spent meandering around the nooks and crannies, and the small towns and hamlets that make up one of New England’s most beloved getaway destinations. It has quickly become a favorite coffee table book in my house, with every new guest thumbing through the pages and commenting on some new discovery or pointing out a nice photograph.
Of the 190-plus pages in the book, easily more than half are filled with Buckley’s color snapshots of locations, buildings, and not-to-be missed spots to see. Along with the photos, Buckley offers loose ideas about how to proceed on the various tours he has laid out. His tour text will get you to the various locations, tell you the basic facts about time, website addresses, descriptions, etc., but then he advises... no, encourages you to take a look around and see what you might turn up on your own. As anyone who has ever gone out for a stroll anywhere on the Cape can tell you, one never knows what exactly might be around the next corner.
Buckley’s text is short and sweet, often funny and to the point. He fills his brief text passages with first-hand advice he has gathered over his years living on the Cape, and from having visited every location in the book. Typical of Buckley’s advice is this passage from the Chatham tour: "...I’ve always told people that Chatham is a bunch of circles. You really can’t get too lost since you’ll always end up running into the water or back where you started."
The book is filled with historical nuggets of information and stories that will remind you of the rich history and mythology of Cape Cod. (Remember that the Pilgrims landed on the Cape before they ended up in Plymouth.) The book can also be used as a great reference book for all the various places of interest on the Cape, since it contains addresses, phone numbers, and instructions on how to get to them all.
The book is divided into different tours on various sections of the Cape, starting at the Cape Cod Canal and then continuing on out to Provincetown. Then, each section is sub-divided into driving, walking, and biking tours.
Since gas prices show no signs of coming down, and the Cape is just a quick hour away from Boston, the Cape is still a cheap and easy day trip. This summer I’m looking forward to bringing Buckley’s book with me when I pull up Bette Midler’s version of "Old Cape Cod" on my I-pod and get some sand in my feet exploring the many hidden places I have still not been to on the Cape. I advise you to do the same. Happy exploring!
by Andrew G. Buckley
Schiffer Publishing
$19.99, paperback, 192 pages
