New Bedford Whaling Museum

After Boston we headed for Cape Cod this is a hooked shaped peninsula on the Massachusetts coast. Cape Cod has been the home of the Wampanoag Indians for many centuries, they survived off the sea, were accomplished farmers and they were the Indians who helped the Pilgrims, who arrived in the fall of 1620. 

Much of the Atlantic seacoast of Cape Cod consists of wide, sandy beaches and because Pres John F Kennedy summered here and owned a home in Hyannis Port, in 1961 he made a significant portion of this coastline into the Cape Cod National Seashore that protected it from private development and preserved it for public use. The Kennedy's still use their summer compound. Lots and lots of people here! We never made to the National Seashore due to road work and the amount of cars on the road, miles and miles of backed up traffic! We detoured off the main highway and found a small two lane road that ran along the north coast of Cape Cod and we saw some of the cutest villages! We stopped at a old general store where Pierre got some of the best fish stew ever..and behind the store we found a old train station were there were old train cars and caboose, all in all a great day! 

We drove to Plymouth Ma to see Plymouth Rock, this is the traditional site of the disembarkation of the Pilgrims who founded this colony in 1620. Now...there is no records that this rock is truly "the rock" but this rock now occupies a prominent spot in American tradition and has been interpreted as a symbol both of the virtues and flaws of the first English people who colonized New England. 

 The Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts is a must see! It houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of scrimshaw art in the world! Scrimshaw is an folk art and can be done on almost any surface, but the sailors used whales teeth and the bone to carve their art because it was readily available and Scrimshaw essentially was a leisure activity for whalers. Because the work of whaling was very dangerous at the best of times, whalers were unable to work at night, this gave them a great deal more free time. Early scrimshaw was done with crude sailing needles and candle soot, ink or tobacco juice was used to bring the etched design into view. 

Whaling was a horrific job and men would leave their families for years at a time and sometimes they abandoned the ship at foreign ports and never returned!

Eventually, kerosene, petroleum, and other fossil fuels became much more popular and reliable than whale oil and with that the industry has plummeted...thank goodness! But I want my readers to know that Norway, Iceland and Japan still hunt whales today! Horrible!