Author: Grubb

Post by Grubb. When I visited Boston in the early 1980s I went to the top of the Hancock Building for the panoramic view. I remember the green swath of Beacon Hill, historic church steeples poking out of brick neighborhoods, and the embracing bend of the Charles River. There was also a nifty topo map…

Post by Grubb. Sunday was spent in the rain, a continuous drizzle that drove us indoors. Connecticut has some famous houses and we visited a couple. First, the Mark Twain house which is next to the Harriet Beecher Stowe house. Both dwellings are large and magnificent, but between these two 19th century heavy hitters, Twain…

Post by Grubb. Saturday morning it was raining when we hit New Bedford. At one time, this Massachusetts shipping town was the center of the American whaling industry. Now it just sticks with fish. Downtown by the docks the cobblestone streets were slippery, the weathered brick buildings damp and dripping, giving the area a 19th…

Post by Grubb. If you imagine the birds eye view of Cape Cod as an arm bent at the elbow with South Beach at the bottom and Provincetown inside the curved fingers of the fist at the top, it looks like the long thin islet could easily disappear under the swell of a tsunami. But…

Post by Grubb. Friday, after taking a walk along the National Seashore, Marc and Judi took us to Provincetown for an afternoon ramble. A bayside Greenwich Village, since the 1920s P-town has been famous for being a summertime bohemian hangout. I expected rundown cabanas and a restored Provincetown Playhouse. The cabanas have morphed into upscale…

Post by Grubb. The last time we enjoyed an extensive visit with Marc and Judi was when we were in Oaxaca during the Christmas holidays in 2018. That was when Marc, bent on introducing Ella to the world of mescal, gave us the rambling go-for-the-worm dark doorway bar tour that prepared us for joining the…

Post by Grubb. Barry and Deidre took us on marsh walk along a narrow pier that looked above sinuous water carved reedy patches where crabs burrowed into the mud. Stepping on the donor-inscribed wooden slats towards the lookout at the end of the pier, I started to feel like I was in the opening sequence…

Post by Grubb. Kurt Vonnegut—who else? In the late o 1950s when Kurt was living in Barnstable, he sold Saabs out of a stone garage. Fortunately, for those of us who are fans, the business never really took off. Cape Cod is known for its summer stock venues (Provincetown Playhouse the most renowned), and Dennis’s…

Post by Grubb. For every trip we take, there’s a search for some edible delight we have a hard time finding in Albuquerque. On venturing out to the Yankee heartland, I was bent on sampling some rhubarb pie. To my taste, it’s the prince of pies. Luckily, in Centerville, a village of Barnstable, there’s a…

Post by Grubb. One of the thought adventures I have when I travel is to compare the landscape of my imagination with the actual terrain I encounter. It usually turns out that reality downsizes the take-away from I’ve read or seen in photographs. Years ago, our visit to the Texas Book Depository in Dallas gave…

Post by Grubb. With clear skies and a faint, almost nonexistent breeze, we headed toward Sandy Neck Beach trudging on a trail of pure sinking sand that cut through sea coast marshland. Signs on either side of the path warned us not to stray. The advice was taken seeing that the poison ivy had taken…

Post by Grubb. After leaving the open landscape of the New Mexican high desert, the drive from Providence, Rhode Island to Barnstable, Massachusetts was like tunneling through a relentless forest. From the brown to the green, the distant to the near, it was a fugitive environment where one could easily disappear. I wondered, what’s hidden…