Not Nantucket, but close

Rico says it's the Cape, not Nantucket (where Rico used to live and his mother and step-father still do), but it's the same description as this article by Laura Holson in The New York Times:

To enjoy Cape Cod in winter, you must close your eyes and listen. There is a symphony of cold in sound: A lone seagull dives for an errant fish offshore, a far-off splash echoing across the emptiness of gray and blue. Frozen ice and sand crackle underfoot as a golden retriever bounds along the beach. The gentle whistle of icy breath, the muffled scratch of a coat collar pulled tight around the neck.
But the real allure of a winter day at this warm-weather getaway is what you don’t see when your eyes are open. Absent are the lines of cars snaking through jammed parking lots of summer or the dance of sunburned beachgoers who slap and yell at stinging waves. The Cape in winter is like a carnival park past its prime, empty but approachable because it is so familiar. And along the shore, there is always the promise of spring, when small waves frozen in sand will retreat with the thaw and slip back to sea, waiting to embrace the crowds when they arrive once again.
That, at least, is what crossed my mind as I stood one crisp afternoon in January on Coast Guard Beach, fifteen miles north of Chatham, Massachusetts, the town situated at the Cape’s elbow. I was seeking a tonic for my post-New Year’s blues. As I wound my scarf tighter around my neck to ward off the bitter cold, I noticed a single fishing boat bobbing in the surf near shore. A rugged fisherman onboard waved in my direction, then hauled up a heavy metal cage from the water, hand over gloved fist.
It was easy to imagine what the Lower, or Outer, Cape (actually the easternmost part, stretching north from the elbow to Provincetown) might have looked like in the early 1700s, when settlers plucked abundant mackerel and cod from the waters along the northeastern shore. Nearly a century later, the author John Hayward described the area in The New England Gazetteer as a place “noted for its fine sailors and men of superior nautical talents.” But it was a place of hardship too, he wrote, where widows “had lost their husbands by the dangers of the sea”.
These days, the biggest hardship in winter is finding that a favorite fried clam shack is closed for the season. But in the off-season, the unfettered charm of the area’s small shore towns is easier to explore. Beaches like Lighthouse Beach in Chatham are empty, their unspoiled vistas rimmed in blue and crystallized white froth. Empty houses line the gullies around Pleasant Bay, where lonely chunks of frozen ice bunch along the water’s edge, ushered together by the drifting tide.
Chatham has a year-round population of about 6,600, and it is a bustling tourist town in high season. Wealthy Bostonians summer in stately shingled houses, a patchwork of gray and white against a blue sky. In January though, the homes almost disappeared into a somber montage of knee-high drifts of powdery snow and silver-colored storm clouds overhead. Small bed-and-breakfasts are plentiful, although many winter travelers stay at the Chatham Bars Inn, a resort and spa where a $1,100-a-night oceanfront suite in summer can be had for one-third the price this time of year. The inn has two white Land Rovers to shuttle guests the few blocks to and from downtown. And while I have never been a fan of hotel spas, theirs was considerable. Masseuses rub hot rocks down the spine to loosen tight muscles. And each patron has a private steam room scented with lavender oil.
Chatham sits thirty miles east of Sandwich, which has a thriving community of antiques sellers, although many items I saw were high priced even by New York standards. It is even closer to Wellfleet, to the north, where oysters and artists abound. I decided to stop in East Sandwich with my friend Lori Silver, who knew about a workshop that taught novice cooks how to make jam and other preserves. I could not imagine a more comforting way to spend a snowy afternoon than in a warm kitchen stirring pots of melting sugar and bubbling fruit. So we wended our way along Route 6A, Cape Cod’s oldest main thoroughfare, past a blueberry farm and boardwalk-covered salt marshes to the Green Briar Nature Center and Jam Kitchen.
Oddly, it is exactly as advertised: a large kitchen with two rows of waist-high burners in the center, pots stowed in shelves overhead and long stretches of copper-topped counters, which framed windows overlooking a frozen pond. The house was built in the 1780s, and in 1903, Ida Putnam opened a tearoom in it for wealthy travelers making the trek to the Cape from Boston. After the tearoom faltered, Ms. Putnam turned it into a small workspace to make her popular preserves. It flourished in the late 1920s, and the kitchen still produces 27,000 jars a year.
I was bummed to learn that we missed the apple-pear-jam class, a bargain at $38, as each participant gets at least four jars to take home. To soothe our disappointment, we bought brandied apricots to eat later. And we took a short walk through the nature preserve where the author Thornton Burgess roamed as a child and which was the inspiration for the children’s books he wrote about Peter Rabbit and his woodland friends.
Cold weather gear— including heavy, snow-ready boots and wool hats— is essential for beach walks and forest hikes. But when the sun goes down, and the temperature dips into the teens, the best place to be is indoors. The evening has a somber quietude all its own. At the Chatham Bars Inn, I saw several guests peering out their windows late at night, marveling at the muted dusting of stars against a blue velvet sky. The night was as silent as it was dark, except for the caw of a lonely bird in flight.
Of course, no trip to the Cape is complete without a meal of oysters. I have never been a fan, but Lori persuaded me that if there was anyplace to try them, it was in Wellfleet. The concierge suggested lunch at the Wicked Oyster, a restaurant in a converted old house, so we decided to spend an afternoon perusing galleries there and taking in the local fare. The restaurant was packed with locals, a sign our concierge had steered us well. I ordered oyster stew — five oysters freshly shucked and poached in a bowl of steaming chowder— as well as a plate of panko-breaded fried sole. Lori ordered oysters on the half shell and scallops caught that morning. It was a delicious bargain, about $35 each, including a latte and tip. And while we waited for our meals, a woman at the bar told us about a clothing sale in town where everything was seventy percent off.
Wellfleet, whose name many believe comes from the words “whale fleet” and was incorporated in 1763, is less developed than Chatham, so the downtown was more spare. But what it lacked in abundant shopping was made up in chic appeal. There are several art galleries along Commercial Street, including the Left Bank Gallery, which has two locations in town, the other on Main Street. There, I found a hand-painted miniature pin by the artist Christina Goodman, which was discounted thirty percent.
There are several places to walk after a leisurely lunch if the shops are closed, including along Duck Creek; Marconi Beach, part of the Cape Cod National Seashore on the Atlantic, facing east; and the more-sheltered Mayo Beach, which faces Wellfleet Harbor. Of course, in winter there is always the threat of snow, which, while beautiful from a hotel room with a fireplace, is less so if you are driving in it. By the time we started home, a snowstorm that had halted traffic outside Boston lifted, though, and snowplows quickly cleared the roads, so traffic was brisk.
It was a wondrous sight on the highway near Plymouth: a stretch of five-story-high trees towering like long-limbed marionettes slathered in marshmallow cream. Even as the traffic picked up, the calm of the frozen Cape lingered. So much so, I closed my eyes and pretended the honk of a nearby car was really the cry of lonely seagull beckoning me back to the shore.
(There's travel info on the second page of the article.)

Rico says that he misses Nantucket and the Cape, but not enough to live there; a visit would be nice, especially before my mother and step-father move south...