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On the Map: Taking the Provincetown Cure
By Mark McNease
On the Map is a travelogue of places, restaurants and landscapes for your travel considerations. Sometimes near, sometimes far, always interesting.
Last year I said, ‘It’s been a year,’ never expecting 2021 to be just as stressful. New president, new Covid variant, new expectations, new disappointments.
What better way to get away from it all than with an annual trip to Provincetown, Massachusetts? We have a timeshare there. My husband Frank has had it since 1985, and among all the things he’s saved over the years is his first ID card for the complex, complete with a photo from 36 years ago. It’s reserved for us the 34th week of every year, which is always at the end of August. For most of our time together (15 years), we didn’t go. I’d never been to Ptown. I’d read about it, but I had no personal experience of the place. Then, four years ago, we started making the trip. And I love it! Except the excruciating drive, which I’ll explain.
The timeshare is in a complex called Eastwood at Provincetown. It’s a very nice place, with a variety of unit sizes. Ours is a one-bedroom, two-bath, with a full kitchen, living room, and a sofa bed that’s too narrow to comfortably lie on but works if you have more than two people staying there. Each unit has a small deck area outside, with a modest size swimming pool in the courtyard. We’re on the second floor, and it’s nice to sit outside having coffee while other guests are downstairs at the pool. A lot of those guests are lesbians and gay men. And being a timeshare, you often see the same people year after year, as well as ones you’ll only meet once.
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On the Map: Laid Back in Lancaster County (PA)
By Mark McNease
On the Map is a travelogue of places, restaurants and landscapes for your travel considerations. Sometimes near, sometimes far, always interesting.
The frequent sight of horse-drawn buggies clopping and rolling along the roads is a perfect image for Lancaster’s life in the slow lane. This is Amish country, something you don’t have to verify with a Google search because the evidence is all around you: in the buggies crisscrossing the roads, in the clotheslines with daily wash fluttering in the breeze, in the houses without electricity or cars. It’s a way of life that can be appreciated without being romanticized: the lives the Amish choose to live are not easy. They may look simple, folksy and nostalgic, but they are lives of toil and prayer. That’s my caveat – to remember when you visit that beneath the calm, relaxed surface of this country life are days of work from sunup to sundown, and a chosen detachment from the lives most of us live.
My husband Frank and I recently took our third trip to the Strasburg/Lancaster area. Frank had been there before we met, but it was all new to me. Three years ago he took me there for a surprise trip and we stayed at the Red Caboose Motel, where each room is a caboose salvaged from trains that stopped running long ago. There are small cabooses, medium-size cabooses, and large ones that can accommodate big families or friends traveling in groups. There’s a restaurant on the property, Casey Jones Restaurant, set in a replica of a dining car, with an attached gift shop. (We ate there on Monday, since it was one of the few places open that night.) I loved the novelty of it all, but there are a LOT of horse flies! Each room/caboose includes a fly swatter, and you will use them. This is not just Amish country … it’s horse country, too.
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On the Map: The Marvelous Morris House Hotel (Philadelphia)
By Mark McNease
On the Map is a travelogue of places, restaurants and landscapes for your travel considerations. Sometimes near, sometimes far, always interesting.
As the most restrictive aspects of this pandemic-burdened year begin to lessen, my husband Frank and I are hitting the road again. For now we’ll be taking local-ish trips we can enjoy with just a few hours’ drive in the car. We have a cruise booked for December that was postponed twice because of Covid and the inability of cruise ships to dock in U.S. ports (combined with our own significant concerns), and I’m looking forward to an extensive trip report when we finally board two weeks before Christmas. Cruising is my favorite form of extended vacation, so stay tuned for a late December travelogue.
This time we took a two night trip to Philadelphia. For a number of years now we’ve treated each other to surprise getaways. One of us takes the other on a trip, and the person being surprised does not know where we’re going. A few months ago I’d seen a recommendation for an outdoor classical concert “under the stars” in Philly, and thought it would be a perfect way to start getting out there again.
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Travel Time: Bears En La Playa Bed & Breakfast, Chelem, Yucatan, Mexico
Travel Time joins Q Audiobooks as a regular feature at LGBTSr, highlighting (in this case) destinations and travel suggestions for the LGBTQ traveler.
Hat tip to reader John H. for referring this fabulous B & B.
Bears En La Playa, located in Chelem, is a small bed and breakfast right on the beach. Chelem, Yucatan is a small fishing village just outside the port town of Progreso. We are 30 minutes from Merida, a city of about 1 million people. A better description might be that we are three and a half hours from Cancun.