The MBTA Commuter Rail offers $10 weekend/holiday passes, which is all the more reason for us to bring Jordan on a second Purple Train trip to cap Labor Day weekend and the end of summer. We’ve been getting deeper into learning on Youtube about our regional rail systems, and Jordan is super stoked to head back to North Station, to pass by the Boston Engine Terminal in Somerville, and to ride to the end of the rather scenic Rockport line on Cape Ann. It’s been a few years since Jane and I visited Rockport (and our first time by train), and the experience by rail is decidedly superior to navigating Storrow, Route 1, and the inevitable North Shore / Salem traffic that crops up every fair-weather weekend in summer and fall (which we experienced just the weekend prior on our road trip up the coast of Maine). On board, Jordan can’t stop chattering the whole way about the B.E.T., the different station stops, and the coastal views. He takes a fascination to the emergency brake valve over the car’s front door. We share some breakfast items purchased from McDonald’s (a smoothie, two hashbrowns, and a sandwich). At the end of the line, we disembark with a sea of other holiday weekend travelers, and Jordan nearly blows an aneurysm at the number of purple trains on the side rails in Rockport station. We take a stroller walk toward the harbor, stopping to photograph the beautiful end-of-summer gardens and front yards in town.
Rockport’s “downtown” is a madhouse today, by far the busiest we’ve ever seen it in multiple (mostly early morning) trips to this normally sleepy seaside hamlet. After stopping at the local farmer’s market (Jane buys a floral tea mix, while I buy a “family” of sunflowers for our apartment), we search in vain for a lunch spot that doesn’t have a line coming out the door. After doubling back a few times along Bearskin Neck, we grab some takeout cups of chowder and snacks from Bean & Leaf Cafe. It will have to suffice until I’m able to grab some seafood from Roy Moore Lobster Co. a little later in the afternoon after the crowds die down. We walk the short distance down the Neck to our apartment for the next two nights - a second-floor unit in a historic Cape house whose weathered wooden beams evoke a ship’s masts. After eating our lunch, Jordan and Jane fall into a death nap. I head out a few times for food and to take a stroll around the harbor with my camera.
In the evening, after our takeout seafood dinner at home, all three of us head out to stroll around the waterfront. Jane and Jordan run off the climb the seawall protecting the back harbor, while I make laps between both sides of the Neck to look for sunset and dusk scenes. Some of my favorite shots: the string-lighted alleyway that sneaks beside Roy Moore’s to the outdoor seating behind the kitchen, where Jane and I first ate in 2020; a lit doorway down the street from our apartment (the kindly older woman watching me bemusedly as I photograph just past her and her husband’s driveway); Motif #1 lit by the glow of lamplight; and a serendipitous shot of glowing windows from the back harbor, in one of which sits Jane and Jordan eating ice cream at the ice cream store hilariously and blandly named The Ice Cream Store, which has had a line out the door from noon to sundown. After awhile, I catch up with Jane and Jordan and order my own ice cream. Jordan and I sit on a bench (belonging to Guppa, local French bulldog-hero) while Jane heads off to browse the remaining open jewelry and gift stores. Then, it’s back to the house by way of warm sodium-lamp glow, past families and kids enjoying the seaside night.
On Sunday morning, we’re up early to have breakfast and head out and explore. After a short walk to Front Beach, Jane and Jordan grab snacks at The Blacksmith Shop Cafe, while I walk to the end of Atlantic Avenue, where a short footpath leads up to a rocky bluff on the headlands overlooking Rockport Harbor. I call Jane and Jordan to join me here, and Jordan enjoys jumping across the granite rocks and admiring the many late summer fruits on the nearby shrubs: northern bayberry, crabapple, huckleberry. After taking some photos of Mama and son (above the harbor, and with the Straitsmouth Island Light at the tip of Cape Ann in the far distance), we head back to the apartment to eat lunch (lobster rolls, clam cakes, smoked salmon, and chowder from Roy Moore - again!) and rest. It’s a lazy afternoon thereafter; Jordan refuses his nap, so we watch some TV before he and Jane head out for another walk and more dessert - this time, frozen custards from Gifford’s. We grab another takeout dinner (a crabmeat roll, fried clams, and steamed corn from the bistro across from Roy Moore.
In the evening, I walk back to the headlands on my own, to catch sunset and photograph dusk from above the harbor while Jane and Jordan browse the shops below. As the light shifts and the sun sets behind the village, I find a nice spot on the cliffs to sit and watch as the crowds thin on Bearskin Neck, and the boats come into anchorage for the evening. My co-fellows Elyse and Lindsey pay me an unexpected video call, and I catch up with them while sharing the sunset and watching darkness set in. Then, it’s a clamber back up the cliff, down the footpath, and back home along window-lit streets.
