Advice to the Obama girls from a Cape Cod veteran

Ignore the Obamatinis and Barack-o-Tacos in Cape Cod and explore the natural wonders at the shore, writes KATE HOLMQUIST

DEAR SASHA and Malia, I’m delighted to hear that you are spending your summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod, and word has it that you may actually be there already staying with close friends, waiting for your Dad to arrive in the last week of August for the official presidential vacation. Lots of kids around here are used to their dads coming and going on the daddy bus and the daddy plane or in your case, I imagine, daddy Airforce One and daddy presidential helicopter.

Most kids don’t have to take vacations in places where the local businesses are selling drinks with humiliating names such as Obamatini and Barack-o-Taco. The pet shop has even invented a Boborama treat for your dog.

Like most kids, you just want to spend time with the guy you don’t get to see for much of the rest of the year. So it’s time to start playing hide the Blackberry (if not the black case with the nuclear button).

“The office gives them Blackberrys so they can’t actually take a vacation,” the wife of a Washington DC lawyer confided to me this morning at the Box Office Cafe. “Wouldn’t it be more productive for the firm in the long-run if they actually let my husband take a week off?” You may actually have heard your mother express a similar view, so do all you can to distract him.

That shouldn’t be difficult on the 28 acres of Blue Heron Farm where you’ll be staying at a cost of €50,000 a week. Your farm is in Chilmark, the most exclusive part of Martha’s Vineyard, which itself is the most exclusive part of the Cape and the Islands. You’ve a pool and golf links but ignore these and head straight for Tisbury Great Pond, which isn’t a pond at all but a saltwater inlet, ideal for kayaking and discovering nature. (You’ll need bicycles too, since cycling is the best way to get around.)

At Tisbury Great Pond, and at your beach – Squibnocket – you’ll find all kinds of amazing things if you’re willing to get mucky, such as horseshoe crabs, which existed even at the time of the dinosaurs, and fiddler crabs so plentiful that they make a noise like a thousand castanets. You have to be really quiet or they’ll run back in to their holes, so bring the kayak close and then hold your breath.

If you really don’t want to miss a thing, ask for an orientation session on salt ponds and beach life from Ed Enos at Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute (tell him I sent you). After 35 years working with scientists from all over the world – 56 of them Nobel Prize winners – there is nothing that Ed doesn’t know. If you’re lucky, he’ll take you around the tanks in his very fishy smelling lab and let you feed minnows to the squid and then feed the squid to the sharks. Quite a thrill, I have to say.

After a couple of hours with Ed, you’ll know what to look for when you’re exploring Tisbury Great Pond and Squibnocket. You’ll find mussels and clams, oysters and scallops. Did you know that a scallop has 100 eyes and is the only creature in the world with two types of vision? Their eyes are blue because their blood is blue. But squid turn red when they’re angry (making them angry is quite easy) and they squirt indelible ink, so be careful. Horseshoe crab blood is so valuable that Ed cares for them in huge tanks – the blood is used to make a powder used to monitor sterile environments for drug and computer manufacturers.

Ed is so busy finding fish for all those Nobel Prize winners that he says he feels like Mother Hubbard, making sure the scientists all get their fair share of his services. Educated by Ed, you’ll have a great time looking for cool stuff on the beach. Also, get a bird book so you identify cormorants, egrets, herons, ducks, geese, turkey vultures and hawks. Go sailing on a small boat and dangle your hands in the clear water, go whale-watching, fishing, capture crabs and then let them go.

In the evening, have a clam bake on the beach with steamers, lobsters, corn on the cob and Portuguese Linguica – the best sausage in the world – then go star-gazing, wrap up and lie on the beach to watch for meteors. There’s no light pollution here. Even better, take Ed’s advice and go to the pier with a flashlight. Shine down into the water and you’ll see phosphorescent creatures feeding like glowing aliens on plankton, and probably a few sharks too. Let’s hope the journos leave you alone and let you be adventurous little girls for at least another summer. Or else maybe Ed will feed them to the sharks for you.