2018 Summer Vacation Trip to Martha's Vineyard

2018 Summer Vacation Trip to Martha's Vineyard

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for July 27, 2018

After we spent two nights in Boston, we rented a truck and drove to Cape Code.  We figured after spending 5 days in the big cities, we wanted to spend the last part of our vacation going to the beach.

We did actually spend a couple of hours on the beach, but it wasn't nearly as exciting as we were hoping it to be, so we decided to do a bunch of other stuff instead.

We knew the Kennedy's spent a lot of time in this area, so we thought it was pretty cool to see this memorial for JFK.  

We end up spending a lot of time eating on vacations for some reason.  This place was called Spanky's Clam Shack.  It didn't really sound like a family kind of place to be, but we were pleasantly surprised.

On Saturday, we woke up bright and early to take the ferry to Martha's Vineyard.  I never did find out who Martha was, but she sure has a nice island.  Not sure why they call an island a vineyard either, but I guess what do I know?  If I'd have named it it would be called "That Island Near Cape Cod".

It was a neat experience.  There are a bunch of big, beautiful houses on Martha's Vineyard.  There's also a lot of nice restaurants and shops to visit.  As a matter of fact, we heard that less than a week later Barack and Michelle Obama actually ate in one of the restaurants we visited.  It would have been pretty cool to see those cats out and about.

We started our adventure at some park across the street from the beach.  We had to buy bus passes to get around the island and they said the guy who sold them liked to hang around in the park.  Sure enough, he was there sitting on a park bench when we arrived.  I guess if I sold bus passes, I'd probably like to do it in a park also.

We stopped at a lot of shops and browsed around.  Not necessarily in that order.  

 Even though, we were in a different part of the country, we still like to take our bird watching pictures.  I'm not sure what kind of birds these guys were, but they sure seemed to like building tall nests.  Maybe there was a bunch of them all stacked on top of each other and these guys were the lucky ones who got to be on top.

Oddly enough, the ducks in Martha's Vineyard look just like the ducks we have back home.  Maybe she was also just here visiting from Minnesota.

I don't think we have seagulls like this back home, but that's probably for the best.  I tried to get close to this one to get a picture together and he just flew away.  Kind of snotty.

Eventually we found ourselves in Edgartown where we saw a bunch of beautiful boats.  We also saw some ugly ones, but we didn't say that to anyone because we didn't want them to feel bad about their boat.  It's probably just  nice to have one here regardless of what it looks like.

These ferry boats go back and forth to Chappaquiddick all day.  We recently saw that movie about Ted Kennedy and wondered if this was where he swam across the channel after he had his accident.  It actually didn't seem that far to swim compared to what I was imagining.  I still think it would probably have been better if he would have called the authorities rather than swimming across it, but what do I know?  If I'm ever in a situation like that, I may feel the need to challenge my swimming skills also.  It's tough to say.

I saw Dave and Brittany walking across the parking lot to us, so I snapped this photo.  It wasn't until later that I noticed I caught a photo of a large land whale behind them.  That's a pretty rare sight.

The Mohars really look nice when they have a harbor pressed up behind them.

We visited a lot of galleries in Martha's Vineyard.  This one was my favorite.  This statue must have been here for a long time if they built those bricks up and over it like that.

This is the Gay Head Cliffs in Aquinnah.  I didn't realize that Avery and the girls were breaking the rules by being out over the fence until the lady lighthouse keeper came over and told them they couldn't be out there.  Apparently there was a big drop off behind them, so I'm glad I didn't capture a photo of them falling.  Although if I had, it would probably have just looked like I had taken a photo of the cliffs by themselves.

 This is the Gay Head lighthouse.  Apparently it's been around since 1799 and was the very first lighthouse on Martha's Vineyard.

What a nice lighthouse.

Before we went back to the mainland, we ate at a fun restaurant with an awesome waitress where they actually threw peanut shells on the floor.  I thought they didn't do that kind of stuff in such a fancy place, but I guess even on Martha's Vineyard they let their hair down in certain ways.  Which is nice.

We had another great vacation with my sister and her family.  I can't wait to see where we go together next!