As noted in the prior post, this is almost a month overdue. In early September we took a weekend trip to Cape Cod because Megan had booked a wedding in the area for a Saturday afternoon and evening. Caleb and I spent most of the afternoon and evening exploring Hyannis together though the trip was quite a mix of last minute changes and random occurrences. (Click on the image to the right to check out a slide show of images from the trip.)

The first hotel we tried to stay at (the one we had reserved ahead of time) ended up challenging our patience. Megan and I agreed that we would have stayed there if we were alone (i.e. sans a two year old) but the thought of spiders crawling all over him for two nights (yes, we were greeted by a massive one the moment we walked in the door), and listening to our neighbors television all night (it wasn’t even that loud, but it sounded as if it were in our room), just didn’t seem worth it. Add into the mix that the toilet didn’t work and that it didn’t appear that the room had been cleaned for several months, and we didn’t feel as if we were being too picky in asking if there were any other rooms available.

As luck would have it, there weren’t any additional rooms. Not at that hotel, or any other hotel in the area (Megan and I tore through the yellow pages for a while). That said, a room in the hotel next door (a Sheraton) magically opened up when the manager from our hotel called. Es muy interesante, si… So, for an evening, and the exact same price, we stayed in the Sheraton.

If you are wondering, the room was fantastic, but unfortunately not available for a second night. Several phone calls the next morning landed us a room in Hyannis, about forty five minutes away. To make this very long, and probably boring, story short, we ended up staying in three hotels over two nights. Sheesh.

The takeaway? If a hotel says they don’t have a room for you, they probably have three…

Ahhhh, there’s nothing like taking a lazy nap in the grass on a hot summer day. Nothing, that is, except for having to take a nap because your toddler is pooped, you have no car, and you have no idea where your hotel is located.

Enter our weekend…

I’ll write more about our interesting weekend trip to Cape Cod in a bit (let’s just say it started out with a giant spider, a few hotel shenanigans, and ended with a bit of off-road driving in a station wagon) but wanted to post the video below before I head to bed.

The short story is that we were in Cape Cod for the weekend because Megan had a wedding to photograph on Saturday afternoon and evening. Not to get too much into the story, but we ended up in a different town than we originally intended to hang out in and Megan had to drop Caleb and I off for the afternoon and drive back up the cape to where her wedding was taking place. We decided that we should part ways at a beach in Hyannis (where our third hotel in less than 24 hours was located) with Megan taking the car and Caleb and I relying on our legs and our trusty adventure backpack to have some fun and then make our way to our hotel for an afternoon nap.

Suffice it to say, we had a great time at the beach and let the afternoon get away from us — we started walking back to the hotel and didn’t make it more than a mile before Caleb started nodding off! Unable to carry him very well while he is asleep (if you don’t already know this about me, I more or less shun strollers) I decided that I pretty much had to find a place to park for a bit and let him take a nap. I chose a grassy hillside in the shade and more or less propped myself back against my backpack in a half sitting half lying position with Caleb sprawled against my chest (check out the photo below!).

He slept like a log despite all of my shifting around ( I realized that the grass was wet and put my hands under my back to keep my bottom and back dry — a great, but very uncomfortable solution over 45 minutes) and the intermittent traffic noise. There was also a bus idling the entire time (waste gas much?) in a parking lot nearby though I imagine that helped Caleb sleep more than anything. I took the video below just as Caleb woke up. My favorite part is when he tried to lie down again and bonked into the camera!