Cape Cod

  • July 28, 2021

We’re on a road trip vacation, and our first two days have been in cape cod. Due to a covid outbreak in these parts, we’ve restricted our activities to outdoor only, which isn’t hard with the beautiful weather and lots to see.

Yesterday we visited two salt marshes. Boardwalks had been constructed over them so you could walk above. We learned that they have plans to rebuild the platforms six feet higher due to future sea level rise.

At the second one the tide was coming in and we watched thousands of crabs and fish moving around as the little pools filled with water. It was mesmerizing!

We then walked along a two mile beach, well past the swimming area, and into dunes where protected birds nest. We were charmed by plovers darting in and out of the waves as they fed. The beach was quite nice and very popular, with loads of people sunbathing and splashing about. We didn’t bring swimmers, so walked in the waves to cool our feet 🙂

Today we went to Provincetown where I walked a causeway across to a sand island (while kls waited, since it was a bit risky for her). It was a challenging walk since the rocks were not level, and a few times I had to jump! Roses are about 9 feet here, and it was low tide when I crossed; I learned that at high tide the waters lap at the top of the causeway. It was extremely windy and a little chill, and the return trip took me 51 minutes! Not bad for a hike that they claim takes an hour each way 🙂

Provincetown is a popular tourist town on the very end of the cape known for its LGBTQ community. The homes and gardens are beautiful and immaculately kept and – since we looked at some listings in a realtor – incredibly expensive!

Provincetown is also in the news right now for recently having a bad covid-19 outbreak and for the first time in many months we were masked everywhere (and so was almost everyone else we saw). It was a bit strange, but I fear it’s the near-future of most of the world (due to Delta) so we may as well get used to it.

We had lunch from a near the pier which serves fresh (fried) seafood. My flounder burger was great but KLS says her scallop roll was ‘beyond excellent’. Even better than the lobster roll she had yesterday!

Afterwards we went and visited the location where Marconi sent his first transmission to England. There was a nearby hike through a swamp which looked great but was ‘infested’ (according to the sign) with ticks and also (according to reviews) with mozzies so we piked out and moved on. Needless to say there’s been a good deal of souvenir shopping as well; mostly for salt-water taffy 🙂

Tomorrow we move to destination #2. I’ll leave you in suspense as to where that will be…

Let’s Trade Cards (Part 4)!

  • July 23, 2021

My bottomless stash of weird trading card packs has no end! Time for some more…

Anastasia (1998) was one of those animated films everyone saw and immediately forgot about. These cards are equally forgettable, and since they were always a staple in the discount sections of card shops (remember them?) I imagine they were massively overproduced and none too successful. The only chase of note were lenticular cards showing a scene from the film, but they were rarer than one per box.

Kristin actually bought me a box of Maverick (1994) cards for Christmas so I have a full set of them! I’ve never seen the film, and based on the images on the cards never want to. It’s another by-the-numbers boring movie card set, and the only chase cards (‘tekchrome’) are so similar to the normal cards they’re almost indistinguishable!

Country Classics cards (1992) are another curious relic from the days of ‘sounds like a great idea’ opportunism! Who bought these? I’m no expert on the topic but it seems to me that in ’92 many of these dudes were long in the tooth, so were these cards aimed at senior-citizen card collectors? Obviously they’re of no interest to me, but I can’t deny I wanted to pull the super rare (only two existed!) redemption cards that back in the day could be mailed in for a 24-carat solid gold card!

This is a good contender for the worst card set I’ve ever seen. In the great trash can of repulsive designs, far below the wacky packages and garbage pail kids, you’ll find this dross. Troll Force (1992) cards showcase horribly drawn ‘trolls’ (which don’t resemble any troll I’ve seen) with ‘comedy’ names doing ‘wacky’ things. They’re disturbingly amateur and utterly unappealing in every way. If you ever come into possession of a pack of these, just burn it.

Based on these Saved By The Bell: The College Years cards (1994) this TV series only had a few characters and they were all girls. It’s a stupid-boring set that reprints pseudo-glamour shots of the actresses with nothing of note on the back. In short, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the show (and I suspect it was made before the show screened). Another trash set hardly worth the cardboard.

There’s a box of beanie babies in our attic and I’ve already decided to do a blog post on them soon so stay tuned for that. These Beanie Baby cards (1988) on the other hand… are a total scam! They’re completely unofficial, and feature bad photos of the toys with meaningless statistics on the back. Beanie Babies were very much on the way out when these cards came out but I’m sure the screaming hordes of collectors bought these cards anyway. I reckon they’ve all ended up in landfills alongside the stuffed toys.

Yes there’s even more packs left to open, including one or two ‘good’ ones! I’ll get to them eventually…

  • Posted in Collecting
  • Robert

Safari!

  • July 18, 2021

Yesterday we visited a local animal park. We’d been twice before but due to covid they were a bit different this year. Specifically: they’d turned themselves into a drive-through safari!

After paying it was a short drive from the entrance to the first gate, beyond which we saw this:

Yes those are camels, and amongst them were also ostriches. In seconds we were mobbed!

We had little cups of food and the animals knew it. They were absolutely fearless when it came to getting the food of us, and didn’t hesitate to stick their heads right into the car.

Yes that’s a gigantic camel helping itself to food from the caddy between us in the car!

The animal flocked around us (and every car) so much that we couldn’t move until the attendants scared them away just long enough for us to drive forward a bit. Of course the cloud of camels and ostriches simply moved to the next car in line 🙂

A bit further along were some zebra! I hastily closed the window because of all the animals in the safari this was the one with warning signs. Apparently zebra can bite!

Next we drove into a forested section full of fallow deer, sika deer, albino deer, llamas and a certain evil bird (see below). This part overloaded with cuteness, mostly because of all the pretty deer and their big dewy eyes.

Of course had no food left since the ostriches and camels had taken it all!

The evil birds were these guys:

I have an ancestral fear of these (as do all Australians) so we closed the windows when they got near. This guy was tapping on the window with his razor-sharp beak as he stared at me with murderous intent. I gibbered as we drove on…

The last section had rhea, oxen, and a few other unusual cow like things. Alas we had no food for we surely would have fed the elegant rhea! They came right up to the car and looked at us with their lovely gray and blue eyes.

It took us a little under an hour to drive through and it was much better than we expected! They did a great job of converting their zoo, and the density of animals was hilarious. A great time was had by all 🙂