Travels With Hannah: Exploring the Mid-Cape

It was the hottest weekend of the year late last July: over 90 degrees late on a Friday afternoon, waves of heat rising from the asphalt. Headed to the South Shore — toward Cape Cod, which is undiscovered territory for anyone who lives and dies by the beaches on Massachusetts’ North Shore — we somehow managed to avoid the traffic, slipping into the town of Dennisport, a mid-Cape section of Barnstable County that faces Nantucket Sound.

We had come for a brief weekend stay at Bluebird Dennisport, the 59-room motor lodge, a classic property redesigned by Lark Hotels, offering a spare, mid-century design concept by Elder & Ash in its rooms and cottages.

In our own two-bedroom cottage, which was outfitted with the original, unspoiled wood paneling, we arrived to find a Bespoke kitchen, a comfortable living room with couch and fireplace, and two cozy bedrooms, one with twin beds and one with a queen. The property’s centerpieces, two swimming pools — indoor and out — were a welcome respite from the weekend’s near-oppressive heat. Those features had been original to the buildings, too, and had been delicately reimagined, along with the rest of the hardscape, in the 2022 renovation that kept most of the property’s retro spirit alive.

The mid-Cape has a calmness to it. It certainly isn’t Provincetown, with its party atmosphere and bravado. There is no discernible center to the mid-Cape, which you might find in other areas. (Farther down, in the outer reaches, towns like Chatham and Wellfleet have a higher concentration of restaurants.)

Still, the mid-Cape has plenty to love. On our first evening, we found ourselves at The Pheasant, across the narrow strip of land in Dennis, Adam and Erica Dunn’s locally sourced restaurant housed in a red colonial building. Dinner was full of pleasant surprises.

Watching the sun turn cotton-candy pink on the petite patio, we enjoyed homemade pasta, pickles and chicken fingers that did not come from a freezer section (for the kids, of course). As dusk settled and the heat temporarily broke, we headed back to Bluebird, where neighboring cottages had lit firepits for s’mores, a festival of summer lights as far as we could see.

The heat was back in full-force the next morning. Bluebird provides beach towels, and so we were up with the sun, first to Kender & Sisters Kitchen (a bakery known for their sublime egg sandwiches that has since shuttered), and next to the iconic Mayflower Beach — miles upon miles of sand at low tide, perfect for wandering young kids like ours. You have to show up first thing in the morning down the Cape to battle for a spot in the parking lot, and we made it just in time, a hair before 9 a.m.

I followed good advice and headed directly to La Tacodilla for lunch, a permanent taco truck in West Dennis born in the pandemic. Over colorful Jarritos sodas and tacos dorados (called tacodillas here), or corn tortillas filled with various toppings and then griddled until crisp, we sat in the midday sun, planning our next moves.

Our destiny lay in another beach, first, until we retreated back to Bluebird for the afternoon blues of the hotel pool, where my kids catapulted themselves into the deep end over and over again. It was the kind of hot day that made it impossible to get out of the water, and so we stayed until the bitter end, until the sun started to slip a little low in the sky.

We had been warned, in fact, that dinner at the Sesuit Harbor Café, particularly on a Saturday night, could be a lengthy affair, particularly if we didn’t show up at an opportune moment to snatch a table (the restaurant does not take reservations). By the time we made it over, close to 6 p.m., a line had already formed into the parking lot.

But we didn’t mind. The setting sun cast a golden glow over the harbor and returning boats. When we finally made it to the ordering counter, we were only too happy to give ourselves over to the process. Lobster. Soft-shelled clams, otherwise known as steamers, served with gray broth and drawn butter. Candy-sweet corn-on-the-cob.

Our picnic table overlooked a calm slip of sea, pink and turquoise in twilight. With buttery hands, we snatched at nuggets of lobster, clam, corn, dipping, chewing, the sea swirling all around us.

We had one more stop to make, and it was an important one, too. New Englanders love their ice cream, and, on a sultry weekend night in July, a stop at Sundae School, which opened in Dennisport in 1976, felt de rigueur.

If you’ve never experienced an ice cream spot with bona fide parking attendants, here’s your chance. The good news is, the ever-busy spot, known for its fresh fruit toppings (go for the blueberry), has service down to a science.

Sweet tooth sated, we headed back to Bluebird for one more night in our serene cottage before it was time to battle the northbound traffic and head back home.

The grounds were quiet when we returned; Bluebird is a place for families, a place for those looking to get away from the fray. For a minute or two, we stood outside, looking out into the inky night, breathing in summer. And then we went inside, where we could hear the faint chirp of the cicadas, where we could take in the warm glow of the wood paneling for one last night.

Summer in paradise does still exist, and it’s only two hours away.