27.5 mi / 12.0 mph / 612 ft. climbing
Home: Martha’s Vineyard Family Campground

I naturally woke at 6am (an hour ahead of our 7am alarm) to find a temperature 5 degrees warmer than yesterday’s 58F, and all dry again.

We were getting back onto the Cape Cod Canal bike path, but this time on the south side of the canal, heading back west. The trail is oddly inaccessible, with only a few official access points along its length, I suppose due to the rail line that runs on its inland side, and maybe due to the slope down to the water/trail level that was created when the canal was dug? Anyway, it was another place for the cycling heat maps to show their value: they reveal the “unofficial” routes people end up creating to access the trail. We chose one that exited out the back of a sport field, through a gap in a thin line of brush, past a sign declaring the railroad private property, and then over the tall I-beams of the tracks with a bit of grunting and heaving the bikes.

After that, Rett was pushing hard, even though we had a tailwind this time. We easily passed a roadie on a bike that weighs a quarter of what ours do. This was an especially-impressive performance because it was our 8th consecutive day of riding. In my younger, stupider days of bike touring, I’d often ride for two weeks without a day off, and once did 30 straight days from Chicago to Portland, Oregon. But we’re wise enough to know that isn’t long-term sustainable for us. Without having any sort of explicit target (or even awareness), our stats show that 7 days is our “normal” limit; we’ve done that six times over these three years. But 8 days is a new record!

Once off the trail we had more riding on pretty, quiet,  country-forest-seaside roads, where every house would give us a chance to share our opinions (mostly positive, frequently jealous). We proceeded onto the Shining Sea Bikeway rail trail, which was less-hilly, but almost more-crowded, with walkers and cyclists. I half-considered returning to the roads just for more variety, but then saw there was a section ahead where the rail line had run right along the beach. Sticking with it was totally the right call.

On this 8th day of riding, we made it 24 miles before our first break, to eat a Trader Joe’s Pumpkin-Spice cookie to power us for the final mile. That meant we were plenty early for our ferry, so we ate lunch at a table at the terminal. Woods Hole is the home of the world-famous Oceanographic Institute, so combined with the astronomical observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, I feel like in the last 3 months I’ve been near the source of 40% of the science articles I read in Discover Magazine  in the 90s-2000s.

There are something like a half-dozen ferries to take you to Martha’s Vineyard, but from Woods Hole we were taking the big, cheap, frequent-running “traditional” vehicle ferry (as opposed to a “high speed” passenger-only ferry. The $28 for us and 2 bikes is a quarter of the cost of some of the other options (including the one we’d originally planned on taking from Rhode Island before its runs were cancelled). They don’t even allow reservations for passengers without cars (because there is always space), so it was a very chill boat to catch.

We did introduce some stress to ourselves because Rett saw that the campground we were heading for on the island did require reservations. I knew they had plenty of availability, but would they somehow be legal sticklers? Do we want to get on this boat and risk being stuck with no island options cheaper than a $250 hotel room? A call went unanswered, so Rett fired off an email and we decided to take our chances.

There was only one other bike on the ferry with us, which seemed strange for such a bike-centric island, and one where there were tons of bike racks (and a decent number of bikes) parked at the ferry terminal. On the bike trail we had passed huge parking lots (including one that’s literally part of the trail), so it looked like even off-season there are a load of people going car-free to the island.

We arrived at Vineyard Haven, replicating the beachgoers disgorged from the ferry in “Jaws” (where Martha’s Vineyard is renamed “Amity”). We did our grocery shopping at Stop & Shop (where Rett got a friendly call from the campground saying that we were all good), and then rode up the hill (with the heavy traffic making us doubt the purported bike-friendliness of the island) to John’s Fish Market. We loaded up with scallops, shrimp, and haddock for Rett to cook into a seafood stew over the next couple nights.

Martha’s Vineyard Family Campground, at $69/night would have seemed insanely expensive to us if we hadn’t recently been paying close to that for state parks. And again it’s a quarter the price of any other option, so we’re glad it exists at all (Nantucket and Block Island have no camping options). Even though we’re one of the two sites occupied in our section of 30, they’re still taking care of the place as if it’s high-season: delivering firewood via frequent golf-cart rounds, lighting a communal fire every night, and raking(!!) the compacted-sand sites between guests. The way the tent stakes slid easily but firmly into the ground communicated “luxury” in a way I’ve never felt before!

To celebrate our arrival to this movie-location island and the end of our 8-day streak, we watched “Jaws” in our campsite using our projector, with a fire to keep us warm.  It’s our own brand of luxury bike-touring: a level of “roughing it” intolerable to some, and a level of comfort and entertainment incomprehensible to others. But the mix of the two extremes is perfect for us, and makes nights like this extra-special.