As the school bell rings on the last day of school, I'm flushed with adrenaline, the idea that anything and everything was possible again, a sense of freedom. I say my goodbyes to my friends, knowing I won’t be seeing them anytime soon and leave as fast as I can. As usual I rush home with my brother in his bright-red pickup truck and it begins. The next day is the day we leave for the Cape. The chaos in my house is overwhelming. Everyone yelling “Where's my..?! Where’d you put my..?!” Everyone frantically searching for things they just now are remembering to pack. If you’ve ever met my family, you know how disorganized we all are. Since my family and I practically live on Cape for the summer, everyone thinks it’s necessary to pack everything they own (myself included). After the mayhem, everyone goes to their rooms, sets their alarms, and prepares for the bright-and-early trip.

We aimed to be on the road by five-am. By six, everyone is packed and in the car, practically asleep. My family is always running behind. Then a whole new form of havoc it wrecked..the car ride. You’d be surprised to see how slow three hours goes by when you have you’re loud-chewing and complaining brothers elbow-to-elbow next to you. With the excessive amount of things packed in the back, there's little room for us to actually sit. My family consists of 5 people: My parents, My brothers Matt and Brett, and of course, me. After hours of pit-stops at gas stations and drive-thrus, Brett complaining about an upset stomach, along with any other mishaps, we see the sign. The symbol of our summer beginning, which read “Welcome to Cape Cod.”  We ask our Dad to slow down so we can snap a picture of it but it always goes by too fast and all we get is a blur.

The bends and turns before the sight of “Shore Road” seem endless and fill us with even more anticipation to get there. At last, we see it all. The Pilgrim monument, our favorite creamery, the cottages, the ocean, all of it. We’ve seen the sight hundreds of times but it still takes us by surprise every time and leaves us in awe. My mom has come here since she was born and she still gets giddy every time. We pull into the pebble-ridden driveway of Bayview and are immediately greeted by our grandmother who has been patiently waiting on our arrival. We hastily unpack and sit on the picnic table waiting for our friends from New Jersey, Lucas and Claire, to arrive. While waiting my brothers and I waste no time planning our activities for the short time they are there. As much as my siblings and I love spending time on Cape, the two weeks our distant friends are there are always the highlight of our summer. We debate over whether to go into town, go out on our boat to fish, or just go relax and swim down the beach. When we realize we can do it all! 

As our friends arrive we hug and talk about the past year since we only see each other on cape during this time of year. After they unpack we group together in the parking lot and decide to plan the rest of the day with activities. We come to the conclusion that since it was such a nice day we would go down the beach and go out on the boat. Matt gathers his many fishing rods and grabs the notorious red fishing bag full of hooks, lures, and old pieces from my grandfather that we dont even know how they work.

As much as I love the cape and all its people, my brother seems to have an even deeper liking for it and all its features. He went even as far as to create an instagram page specifically for pictures of the landscape, sunsets, and happenings year-round. The page ended up blowing up and he now almost has twenty-four thousand followers and he is OBSESSED. “Lifeoncapecod” and cape cod itself has become a huge piece of my brother’s life and he even decided that he will be attending Mass Maritime Academy on cape for college!

We walk down the seemingly endless boardwalk and kick off our shoes at the end and let our feet wiggle into the sand. As we wait on shore for Matt to get the boat off the mooring, we walk along sand looking for rare pieces of seaglass and shells. We pile onto the boat, trying our best not to get soaked but ending up drenched by the time we get on. But the bright sun and wind blowing as we ride dries us up almost immediately. Matt drives us around “the point” and we watch finback whales,dolphins,fish and seals breach on the surface of the water. There are wayy too many seals on cape. After that we decide to ride over to the courtesy float where we dock our boat and walk right into town to get ice cream and candy at our favorite shops. We stop in at The Penny Patch (a candy shop) ,where I work in the summertime with my friend Caroline. I surprise her and act as if i’m a customer and ask for a square of fudge. She begins to answer and then realizes who I was and yells and hugs me and my brothers. We say bye and head back to the boat.

After our trip we head to shore and go boogie-boarding, paddle-boarding, and kayaking. After constantly falling over and flipping each other off our boards, we head to shore and take in the sun. We repeat all these activities along with many more for the remainder of the two weeks and we say our goodbyes to our friends. Even though they left, my family still had the whole summer ahead of us  along with many other friends coming to visit. The months following are memorable and yet seem to go by in the blink of an eye. Leaving the cape after being there for those 2 months is always the hardest. Having to leave behind our Grandma who stays there till October (or until it gets cold) and all our friends that live there year-round. Even though we go to the same places and do the same things, were never bored and always find stuff to do. The people and places of the cape always leave us with new memories and make our summers complete.