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Provincetown in the Off Season

by Mel Allen

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_{Photo Credit: Annie Graves}

There is no better way to know a famous tourist town than arriving off season, when the tourists have left, and the locals reclaim their streets, their beaches, their way of life that brought them here in the first place, perhaps generations ago. I rarely visit a beautiful place without daydreaming at some point about what it might be like to live there. And it was no different this time when we came to Provincetown, at the tip of the outer cape.

Credit: Annie Graves
Colorful buoys that will soon top the famous lobster trap Christmas tree.

If you've been to Provincetown, Massachusetts in the height of summer, you know there are few more entertaining destinations in the country. You can pass a day simply people watching on Commercial Street, the three mile long living carnival of homes, shops and humanity that runs parallel to Cape Cod Bay.

You can walk for hours through the undulating dunes of the Province Lands in the Cape Cod National Seashore. You can simply throw down a blanket on the beach and let the enervating surf cool you down. And you can share all of this with some 50,000 plus like minded visitors, who are willing to wait for traffic to crawl through town, wait for restaurant tables, wait for parking by the beach.

Credit: Annie Graves
Approaching Fisherman's Wharf by boat.

Which is why I love off season. There may be at best barely 3000 year-rounders to share the streets with you. Like bookend visits, I came to Provincetown in April and again this November, just before the town's famous Thanksgiving lighting of the Pilgrim Monument. The monument seems to follow your gaze wherever you are in town, or even on the wind swept dunes. The monument symbolizes the town's pride in its history—and reminds everyone that the pilgrims first made landfall right here in Provincetown Harbor, and signed the Mayflower Compact while anchored offshore. If you had forgotten that fact before coming to town, you won't soon forget it again after visiting the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum.

Credit: Annie Graves
Provincetown's Pilgrim Monument.

Commercial Street beckoned with only a relative handful of cars and pedestrians, all of waving to each other as if we were all in on a wonderful secret.

The Outer Cape's ocean waters moderates temperatures—flowers bloom here earlier and stay longer. In April the lovely, well kept homes that hug the narrow, winding streets were already boasting flourishing gardens.

Credit: Annie Graves
April flowers start the season with color.