The Memorial Day weekend is the official start of the tourist season on Cape Cod. All bets are off. Residents hunker down, and prepare for the invasion. We share our beaches, our roads, our stores, our restaurants. Most visitors come down just for the weekend and leave on Memorial Day. We know the back roads, most of the tourists do not.
Their exodus creates a mess. There are only two bridges connecting the Cape with the mainland. At one point, traffic backed up approximately 14 miles. Luckily, all those leaving the Cape did so without causing any accidents. Things have quieted down now, but they'll be back! Every weekend, every vacation, or even all summer long, they will be our "pain in the neck" but an ever so necessary one (a stimulus to our economy!)
So thats where they go when they leave South Florida!
ReplyDeleteThat is much the way life is Red River, NM. Memorial Day is the beginning of tourist season although June is slow compared to July and August. But the summer residents start moving in and the town comes alive. Memorial Weekend in RR has about 3000 bikers in town to kick off the season. Every policeman for miles and every state patrolman that can be spared is in the area keeping things peaceful. One year there were 11 motorcycle deaths in Taos County alone over Memorial Weekend - a dispatcher's nightmare.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite comment about Tourist Season:
ReplyDelete"Well, if it's 'Tourist Season,' how come we can't shoot 'em?"
Yeah, but they ALL stop through DC on the way there... You have not seen F-'ed up traffic till you see lookie-loos running into the sides of tour buses in the middle of morning rush hour traffic, or try to fight home on the side streets, only to find some dumba** driving a bus has managed to get wedged at an intersection... sigh...
ReplyDeleteSharon - the number of FL license plates is astounding! Guess it's just too dang hot down that way in the summertime!
ReplyDeleteLou - Wow 11 deaths? That's terrible! They've beefed up our troopers, locals etc. for the season but honestly it was fairly quiet (Thank God) and the highlight of the weekend is when they caught the local boys who had been breaking into vehicles in one of the local towns.
Buck- Great minds think alike! I almost put that one in the post!
Jim- I don't envy you in DC. That place is a nuthouse for traffic! Too many people on the road... should stop em at the border and give them a bus pass! I rode the subway most of the time I was there... or walked... left my truck at the hotel. We have "rotary circles" here... now those are a real test for some of these folks.... :)
Oh damn... rotaries... Try driving on the wrong side of the road and going through one of those- Talk about brain freeze/brain screaming we're ALL gonna die!!! simultaneously no less :-)
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