Frozen Cape Cod

Back in February of 2015, I remember reading news reports about huge chunks of sea ice washing up on the beaches of Cape Cod.  Photos showed people standing next to huge boulders of ice, some five to six feet tall.  Around the same time, I also read reports and saw photos of the ice at Niagara Falls.  It's funny how certain memories stick with you.  2015 was the year we had all those snowstorms.  I remember being at work that winter and reading those news articles and so badly wanting to go see it for myself, but with a full time job and three little ones, I couldn't.

Although, this sort of leads me to another discussion I wasn't planning on having.  What if I had taken a day off from work and driven down to the Cape by myself?  Would that have been selfish?  Why, as a parent, do I sometimes feel that doing things for myself is selfish?  At the time, work was a mess, the trains were a mess and deliberately missing a day of work, knowing the backlash that would ensue, lead me to not even consider it.

Last week during the storm, I closely followed the weather reports for Cape Cod.  While our cottage is technically located in a flood zone, we believe that is due to wetlands located well behind us.  We are quite a bit uphill from the ocean and I can't image it ever reaching us.  That being said, I never expected to see Boston flood as it did during the "almost" blizzard last week.  We knew parts of the Cape had flooded with extreme high tides.  When the storm ended, I began seeing photos of sea ice, similar to 2015, popping up on local news outlets.

On Sunday, we drove down to the Cape to check on the cottage and witness the storm aftermath for ourselves.  I also thought this would be a good learning opportunity for the girls.  Frozen sea water isn't something we see here in New England very often.  There are two sides to Cape Cod - the bay side and the ocean side.  Our cottage is located on the ocean side.  From what I could tell online, it appeared that a great deal of sea ice was to be found on the bay side.

Our first stop was a little beach next to Sesuit Harbor, located on the bay side.

Here's what that beach looked like over the summer.



And here's what that beach looks like now.

















Sesuit Harbor in the summer.





Sesuit Harbor in the winter.





We stopped by a few beaches on the ocean side after we checked on the cottage but the parking lots were all closed off.  I did run down to one beach to check it out after we parked in a nearby driveway.  By the way, the cottage was fine.  We were more concerned with wind damage or a downed tree.  The Cape didn't see much snow from this storm but there were hurricane level winds.  One of our neighbors lost some fencing from falling tree limbs.





No sea ice over here.



On our way home, we stopped by Gray's Beach in Yarmouth.  I'd read how the boardwalk had been destroyed during the storm.  There's a deck with seating at the end of the boardwalk and that had been completely washed away in the storm.  Portions of the boardwalk had been taken out by the ice as well.

Summer views...





Winter views...





















I'll leave you with a photo of this cute door we came across.  Classic Cape Cod.