The House on Rock Harbor Road -- Monday, June 19th, 1961

Entry two in my father's Cape Cod diary:

Yesterday was both my birthday and Father’s Day. Moo packed us a lunch or rather dinner and we drove to Nickerson State Park in Brewster where we swam and sunbathed and ate on the shore of Flax Pond. The park is an extensive wooded area, pine and oak, with two large ponds, the biggest is Cliff Pond, which must be a couple of miles long. 

It is hard to believe this spot is only three miles from our house. The setting looks more like New Hampshire than the Cape, except that there is almost always a gull swooping down over the lake to remind you that the ocean and the bay are mere minutes away. I should imagine that during stormy weather many sea birds seek out these fresh water ponds as shelter from the driving seas and winds. 

On all sides of the lake there are camping areas where many people had already pitched their tents and trailers (if that’s what you do with trailers), and the smell of the wood fires is one of the pleasantest of things about the park. I still have to see about getting reservations for the Lull’s to camp there when they stop by in July. I’m sure that the park is one of the most popular in New England, situated as it is so close to the high-cost summer resort area, of which we are undeniably a part. 

The weekend was clear and sunny, as it is today, and it has been getting increasingly hotter with each passing day. But the wind is always blowing from the south and west, which helps to keep the air continually refreshed. The average velocity of the winds on the Cape is fourteen miles an hour, making this one of the windiest spots in the country. Edwin Way Teale writes on the Cape’s wind at some length in his North with the Spring. He cites the wind forests along headlands where oaks and pines are stunted to knee-high growth even though they may be twenty years of age. He calls them Lilliput woods.