Funny, isn't it, how rain always puts a damper -- pun intended -- on a vacation even if you are in a city and plan to spend your sightseeing time indoors admiring oil paintings or examining artifacts. But precipitation can massacre a mood when you are in a place like Cape Cod, when you simply want to hike or bike or expend energy by doing nothing more strenuous than turning 180 eighty degrees on the beach to avoid sunburn.

Face it -- the Cape shrieks OUTDOORS.

The following attractions are not for visiting on bad weather days only. But they offer ample evidence that there is much more to do on Cape Cod in poor weather than retreat to your room and play Trivial Pursuit. (Question: who was the first 20th century president use a Massachusetts residence as a Summer White House? The answer is below.)

Old East Windmill

One could easily spend two to three hours at Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich. The museum grouping is in reality a 100-acre repository of Americana with adjacent gardens. It began as the donated collection of members of the Lilly family of pharmaceutical fame, who also happened to be frequent Cape Cod summer residents. 

The operating carousel with the hand-carved horses gracing the complex's art museum rotunda might be enough to make staying indoors palatable, especially for those to whom studying scrimshaw is as enticing as watching televised chess. Try to consider the carousel creatures not as amusement conveyances but as art, especially the wood-carved cat chomping a wood-carved fish by the doorway.

This bulk of the concoction of collections is rife with Americana, with a multitude of galleries tucked in three main buildings. The Duesenberg, a classic car from the 1930s driven by legendary actor Gary Cooper, joins the presidential car once occupied by President William H. Taft as star attractions of an auto amassment in a reproduced Shaker-style round barn. (Answer to above Trivial Pursuit question: It was Ohio native Taft, who summered in a cottage in the town of Beverly north of Boston.)

The newly renovated American History Museum exhibits A Bird in the Hand: The Carvings of A. Elmer and Cleon Crowell, which highlights the museum's large collection of Crowell bird carvings. As a boy in East Harwich, Elmer began his career by making a few carvings for friends and eventually began to carve full-time. He opened a workshop just as tourists were beginning to come to the Cape and many bought his carvings as souvenirs, and soon his son joined him in the family business.

An operating Dutch-style windmill built in the Cape village of Orleans in 1800 with sails resembling Paul Bunyan's bed sheets provides both a respite from the rain and an intriguing lesson in wind energy. Photo courtesy Heritage Museums & Gardens.

Young cousins Maria Shriver and Caroline Kennedy

Senator Edward "Teddy" Kennedy, brother of President John F. Kennedy, said, "The time President Kennedy spent in Hyannisport during his youth and presidency were among the happiest days of his life." That life in Hyannisport is on view at the John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum.

President Kennedy summered here at his family's compound and stories of touch football and sailing, Kennedy-style, captured Americans' hearts in the early 1960s. Hyannisport was, according to an introductory video narrated by longtime news anchor Walter Cronkite, "a place where hearth and home coexisted with business as usual," where wandering dunes and windblown beach craft occupied the president's mind along with news from Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, Berlin and the Soviet Union. A family timeline is posted and an audiotape highlights the quips of the president known for his sharp sense of humor.

More than 80 framed vintage photos of the Kennedys at work or play here during the presidential administration, which became known as "Camelot," constitute the gist of the museum exhibits. There is the president with cabinet members Dean Rusk and Averill Harriman in July 1963; the president and John Jr. leaving a Hyannisport candy store; and the nuclear Kennedy family sailing on Cape Cod Bay. The most endearing photo might be the July 1963 shot of cousins Caroline Kennedy and California's current first lady Maria Shriver, perhaps in first grade, sitting together and accompanied by empty lunch plates. Caroline has her fingers stretching her mouth wide as she sticks out her tongue. Photo by Michael Schuman.

Toilet turned end table at Gorey House

The Cape was home to many other notables, one being Edward Gorey, whose name might at first seem to refer to your sister-in-law's dentist. But if you have ever seen the introductory artwork shown on the PBS series Mystery, you are already familiar with the bearded and bespectacled Gorey's eccentric and sometimes macabre work. His Yarmouth home opened to the public in July 2002.

Gorey admired Japanese literature and culture to the extent that he set up a Japanese rock garden in the kitchen, still there today. In fact, the entire kitchen looks much as it did during Gorey's residence, right down to the trio of Felix the Cat magnets attached to the refrigerator.

Gorey loved cats; a recently acquired original Gorey item is his comfy couch, reduced to tatters by his five live cats. He was also fond of bats and elephants. Be sure to notice the toilet that Gorey transformed into an elephant-shaped end table, and the driftwood resembling an elephant head posted above the kitchen entrance.

A back room is a repository for literature about his favored causes, such as Bat Conservation International, Inc., as well as copies of Gorey's fanciful tomes such as The Doubtful Guest, The Glorious Nosebleed, The Shrinking of Treehorn and The Epiplectic (sic) Bicycle. The prologue to the bicycle title sums up Gorey's style: "It was the day after Tuesday and the day before Wednesday."

Several of Gorey's original fine-lined pen and ink illustrations are displayed, as are personal possessions like his trademark raccoon coat, something he stopped wearing in the 1980s out of his respect and love for animals. A special display on view this year commemorates the 50th anniversary of his book, The Doubtful Guest. Original artwork, along with rejected ideas, sketchbooks, dolls and ephemera relating to The Doubtful Guest are displayed.

But was Gorey as gory as his persona? Friend Rick Jones, responds, "I suppose with some people he gave that impression. But he really wasn't. He'd come over my house and we'd play Mille Bornes (a card game of cross-country auto racing through France) or cribbage. He was a very complex individual who loved everything. He was a delight and had a wonderful sense of humor." Photo by Michael Schuman.

Dunes at Cape Code National Seashore

Our driver from Art's Dune Tours in Provincetown also had a sense of humor. When I told my daughter she'd hear lots of funny jokes on the tour, guide Rob Costa overheard me and responded, "Lots of jokes, yes. Funny, I don't know."

We bumped up and down the dunes in an enclosed Suburban, perfect for a rainy day. During his narration, Rob listed for us the wildlife found on the dunes here: "white-tail deer, non-poisonous snakes, turtles, coyotes, and bear. And one time a passenger got out of the vehicle and was chased by a bear but we wouldn't let him in since we won't take anyone with a bear behind."

Ba-dum-dum.

Actually there are no bear on the dunes, nor does one have to bear a barrage of puns, for better or worse, depending on your sense of humor. Rob shed light on both the natural and human history of the dunes, identifying beach plums and rose hips as well as the isolated dune shacks -- and without electricity or running water they are shacks and not cottages -- where the likes of Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Jack Kerouac once took a vacation from the world to let the sand and sea air be their muses.

A part of Cape Cod National Seashore, the dunes have a Mojave Desert-like quality, with patches of grass and brush dotting the landscape like freckles on a redhead. To stress the environmentally friendly nature of the tours, Rob Costa states, "We drive very slowly on marked trails only that the national seashore provides for us, so as not to trample the dunes."