Spring Visitors to Cape Cod Discover Unseasonable Welcome, Opportunity

Cape Cod does not become a summer resort until summer. This can make May and early June particularly enjoyable for the casual visitor.

Between July 4 and Labor Day, vacationers swarm to the Cape, renting every available room, boat, and bath house. The year-round residents either retire to moderate solitude or turn themselves zealously to the business of draining every possible dollar from the summer trade.

For the next two months, on the other hand, beaches will-be-deserted and free of garbage; boatyards are beginning to empty their sheds and will rent small craft readily and cheaply; hotels and rooming houses are just shaking out their linen; and the natives treat visitors with more friendliness than avarice

There is good reason, of course, for the beaches being deserted. Even if the Cape hand its full summer population on hand, most people would find the chilly water and air enough to make them keep their clothes on.

But even in May the Cape can get warm enough for swimming at noon, and the water in Buzzards Bay and along the south shore is far warmer than any north of the Canal. Good beaches line almost the entire coastline except the steeper and rocker western end. The only decent beach on Buzzards Bay is Old Silver Beach. Of course, if one is after just plain swimming, a single rock will suffice.

The south coast is a little pebbly, but the eastern Athletic shore is one uninterrupted beach from Provincetown to Chatham. The surf there after a nor'esst storm is the best within a day's travel from Boston. The top side, Cape Cod Bay, has wonderful sand dunes for picnics, especially around Barnstable and Wellfleet; but the water is just too cold for swimming until August.

The best small sailboat racing in the country is in Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound, perhaps because these two bodies of water boast fresh, moderate winds almost every day of the summer.

Boatyards paint and varnish hundreds of 13 to 25 foot craft within the next six weeks; most of them are privately owned, but almost every yard has some boats of its own which it rents in July and August for a fortune, and on off-season days for a pittance.

Resort hotels, fancy restaurants, summer theatres, golf clubs, and yacht clubs will keep their shutters up for another six weeks. But people live on Cape Cod all year, and they do not lack amusement. They go to the movies and eat is drugstores.

Picturesque towns to visit are Sandwich, Wellfleet, and Provincetown. Sandwich has screnely escaped the summer trade. It neatles quaint and unspoiled to the northwest corner, right near the Canal.

The other two are basically interesting and charming towns, though it is hard to discern these characteristics behind a foreground of half-naked tentists. Princetown is particularly nice at this that of year, before strange characters and professional bohemian infest.