Woods Hole, Massachusetts

I love the ocean, so visiting Cape Cod is always a welcome change from Minnesota. One great spot to visit is Woods Hole, which is a small village at the tip of the elbow of Cape Cod. It's part of Falmouth, the town where my father lives. When I was younger, I had a summer job out here at the Marine Biological Laboratory. I worked in the Embryology labs: I fed drosophila, broke a lot of lab glassware, fetched mail, and made photocopies.

Now I just go to Woods Hole for a cup of coffee and a nice walk or bike ride. On Sunday, we took a walk through town, starting, of course, with an iced latte from Coffee Obsession, my dad's coffee shop of choice in town. We walked down Water Street to a little park with access to a small beach, where we let the dogs run and swim for a bit.

There are docks here for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and my dad likes to tell me that the big boat he traveled on across the Atlantic when he was a teenager was parked at these docks.

We headed past the small aquarium where the seals are never out anymore (growing up, they were always there) and headed out to the dock where the fishing boats come in.



I've come here hundreds of times, and I've never seen a boat unloading fish before. On this day, there was a boat filled with conch and a boat filled with sea bass and scup:



After a little gift shop browsing near the drawbridge, we headed home to hit the beach. I love to find perfect spots like Woods Hole (you know my list, Terlingua, Moab...), so having one that I can come back to again and again is something I truly appreciate.