Hoping to spend Memorial Day weekend in Provincetown, MA, we combined our love for outdoors with a desire to save money and booked a campsite at Dune’s Edge campground.

It’s not ideal… it’s very chilly the first night and the campground does not allow campfires due to fire risk in the dry, windy pine forest. What is camping without a campfire?

But, the visit is to enjoy time in the town during a weekend celebrating young gay women in addition to enjoying nature, so we throw on as many layers as we can find and bike into town.

We lock up and head to JD’s, because, for some reason, sitting outside seems desirable to us in the 34-degree weather (fortunately, they do have warmers). A friend had given me the inside-scoop that one can order Saki sushi from JD’s for cheaper than at Saki!

From our spot on the porch we can see others walking the streets along the main strip of the town. I’m disappointed how few lesbian couples I am seeing, and hoping those numbers were to increase throughout the weekend (they do).

By the time we leave it is wildly frigid. We don our multiple layers and light jackets and bike back to the campsite, shivering.

Last time we camped, it stormed overnight. We both woke up to a crack and a thud – but as we soon realized that whatever tree or tree branch snapped did not crush us, we rolled over and went back to sleep.

In the morning, we woke up and pulled on our shoes and unzipped the tent and saw how alarmingly close the massive tree branch was to our tent – about two or three feet from where our heads rest.

So when the thunder and lightning begin at Dune’s Edge in Ptown, this thunderstorm-loving couple got a little more nervous than usual. Fortunately, Dune’s Edge has much smaller trees, so we believed if a branch broke, we would survive its impact.

The lightning, this time, was what was alarming, and the cracks of thunder so loud I was sure no one could possibly be sleeping in the campground. As I had learned as a child, I started counting the seconds between the flash of light and crack of thunder, telling myself we would run to the car if it got much closer.

I asked my wife “are we safe?” and after a somewhat uncomfortable length of hesitation she said yes, she thought we were safe, if the storm didn’t come closer. Well, we did survive the storm, and woke up to a bright and sunny day with a significant raise in temperature, a pleasant 60-degree cape day.

We spent most of our mealtimes at the campsite, grilling steak and fish. Our grill was one of our best wedding gifts, usable at home and portable for camping.

The first night we had steak, and used the leftovers for steak n’ eggs. We have a French press we use while camping for quick and easy coffee.

The second night, my wife made swordfish with just salt, pepper, and lemon as the seasoning. I had not had swordfish before! It was divine on the grill, especially with some roasted summer squash and zucchini.

In the future I can perhaps comment more on establishments within Provincetown; we spent less time in the town than we expected, and more time grilling at our campsite and biking the Dunes. And it’s an amazing place to bike – but not for the faint of heart. Surrounded by ocean on three sides? It must be flat!, one might think… not so. But the paths link the two main beaches to the town, with rolling hills and sand on one side, and a relaxing ride through the woods on the other side.

Lez-Travel Rating:

It’s gay heaven. Every queer person should travel to Provincetown in their life, and be amazed. It’s perhaps the only place in the world (for now…) that gay people outnumber straight people. And it’s magic. To feel for the first time like the majority is a feeling hard to describe.