Martha’s Vineyard
The next day we headed out for a two day adventure to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. We decided to be really adventurous and leave our car and just take our bikes and backpacks. There is a ferry to both islands that will take cars but no ferry between the islands that takes cars so if we wanted out car we would have had to take the ferry to one island then back to Cape Cod then to the other island and we didn’t want to do that. Both islands are fairly small and before we made this decision we plotted out what we might want to see and determined the most riding we’d end up doing is about 20 miles a day which is totally doable for us. Add in the fact that we have electric bikes and the decision was even easier. The only concern was rain. But worst case scenario is a taxi around.
So off we went leaving the campground at 9:30am for Hyannis Port to catch an 11am ferry for Martha’s Vineyard. It was a nice boat ride and we arrived at the Vineyard at noon, just in time for lunch. Had a great lunch overlooking the port then rode our bikes to our hotel which was only about a mile away.
Both islands have some interesting history. They were both inhabited by native Americans as far back as 3000 BC. That’s 5000 years ago! Both were settled by the Europeans back in the mid 1600’s. The Vineyard was home to one of the earliest known deaf communities in the United States. In the early 1800’s the Vineyard became a very popular meeting place for Methodists. It started out as an annual religious camp on a piece of property by some local Methodists with people staying in tents then they began building colorful home that were to represent the early tents. There are now hundreds of these beautiful, colorful “Gingerbread” homes clustered together.
Next piece of history. This is where the movie Jaws was filmed. There is a bridge scene in the movie where Steven Spielberg paid a bunch of kids $5 apiece to run across the beach screaming. Of course, we had to see that bridge. Funny thing about it is, there’s signs on both sides of the bridge saying no jumping off the bridge and there were people jumping off non stop. Guess they weren’t afraid Jaws would return.
I know I’m getting longwinded on this one so I’ll finish by saying there are 2 main towns of the Vineyard and one famous island. The towns are Oak Bluffs, where we stayed and the Gingerbread Houses are and Edgartown, which was a 6 mile bike ride each way that we did on day 2. The island is Chappaquiddick which for those of you that aren’t our age or aren’t familiar with the Kennedy’s I’ll give a quick history of. Back in 1969 Senator Ted Kennedy, brother of John F. Kennedy (president that was shot in 1963) was driving to their family home on Chappaquiddick around midnight and after just a few too many drinks. He just happened to have his cute 28 year old aid, Mary Joe Kopechne in the car with him when he drove his car off the bridge. She died, he survived but didn’t call the accident in to the police until 10am the next morning. Oh, and by the way, he was married with three children at the time. Anyway, he was convicted of reckless driving. Must be good to be a Senator with a brother that was always revered.
We finished our tour of the Vineyard and caught the 4pm ferry to Nantucket.