Featured Stories & Articles from Cape Cod Travel Magazine: Cape Cod Quahog Day

Proving the groundhog has nothing over the quahog, Cape Cod kicked off Summer 2009 with the inaugural Cape Cod Quahog Day!

 

The centerpiece of this fun and offbeat event, marking the first day of Summer, is the Quahog’s prognostication for how many weeks of beach weather lie ahead.

Knowing it could be a challenge to communicate with the little soothsayer, we called upon Johnny Quahog, the esteemed Secretary General of Quahog Republic, who speaks the secret language of the bi-valve. As throngs of people waited in anticipation, the Secretary General consulted briefly with the Quahog before announcing the good news. He had predicted 11 ½ weeks of sunshine! 

Other highlights of the inaugural Quahog Day included a clambake preparation ritual, tribal dancing by the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, and competitions for the title of 2009 Ms. Quahog, Boss Hog and Mister/Miss Littleneck.  Far from a beauty pageant, these contestants faced such challenges as shell tossing, shrimp eating, defrosting a frozen t-shirt, digging for quahogs, watermelon eating and the limbo.

“We wanted to do something a little different and a little quirky to usher in the summer season,” said Wendy Northcross, CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce.

Now how accurate was the Quahog’s prognostication, you may ask? It depends on who you talk to. While the weather in July ‘09 was quite unpredictable, the Cape experienced a stretch of sunny weather from mid-August all the way through October. 

 

The Quahog’s defenders argue that his prognostication was in fact correct, but that his timing was off for when we would start actually seeing the sunny skies.  Others felt the Quahog had missed the mark completely and demanded he be eaten at the end of the summer, to make way for a new and more reliable Quahog at the 2010 prognostication ceremony. (Note: at press time, the Quahog had gone into hiding and was last spotted in the Plymouth area).

Find out what all the buzz is about at the Second Annual Cape Cod Quahog Day on June 21, 2010 at Hemisphere Restaurant in Sandwich! Details about this year's festivities can be found at www.Quahog Day.com. Follow the updates at www.Facebook.com/VisitCapeCod and www.Twitter.com/VisitCapeCod.