New Year's Greetings from Cape Cod

I'd been to Cape Cod once before. In 1988, I was asked to speak at the fall meeting of the Insurance Accounting and Statistical Association in Hyannis in November. It was held in a Holiday Inn that was undergoing off-season renovations, and new carpet was being put down in the hall outside my room, so I was inhaling carpet glue fumes as I put the finishing touches on my speech. My company's CFO and I decided to venture out for dinner one evening, and got caught in the season's first snowstorm. So, when friends invited my wife, daughter, and me to join them for New Year's at their house in Orleans (see photo above), I was skeptical. The drive up was through fog and rain, which inensified my doubts. However, New Year's Day dawned bright and clear, and after breakfast we drove to Nauset Beach, on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Cape Cod Peninsula.

We weren't the only people out enjoying the beach.

Some were enjoying it with gusto.

There were seals with their heads out of water, but too distant to get a good photo.

Here is a very gnarly piece of driftwood.

These are dunes above the beach.

The dunes are a nesting place for threatened seabirds.

Behind the dunes is the Orleans Town Inlet.

On the shore of the Inlet, I found this water dwelling snail and its track. These snails prey on oysters, drilling through their shells to eat them.

A gull paddles across the surface of the Inlet.

High-flying cirrus clouds betoken another change in the weather.

I'm delaying posting my usual New Year's shout-outs until we return home. Happy New Year!