7 Best Reasons to Visit Cape Cod
Cape Cod is that famous hooked arm of land curling off the coast of Massachusetts, seventy-seven miles of beach towns, salt marsh, and lighthouses that empty out in winter and triple in size every summer. If you have never made the trip, here are seven good reasons to point the car toward the bridge.
1. The beaches earn the reputation
The Cape has beaches for every mood: the warm, calm bay side for families, and the wild Atlantic side of the Cape Cod National Seashore for anyone who likes their surf with a little attitude. Forty miles of protected shoreline means you can usually find a stretch of sand to yourself if you are willing to walk.
2. The seafood is worth the drive alone
Lobster rolls, fried clams, oysters pulled from Wellfleet that morning. The Cape takes its shellfish seriously, and a paper tray of fried clams eaten on a dock as the sun goes down is close to a perfect meal.
3. Two islands, one short ferry
From Falmouth or Hyannis you can catch a ferry to Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket in well under an hour. The waters around both are some of the most beautiful on the East Coast, all shifting channels and shoals, which is exactly what makes them so satisfying to see rendered in the bathymetry of a wood chart.
4. Whale watching off the tip
Head out from Provincetown and you are a short boat ride from Stellwagen Bank, one of the best whale-watching grounds in the country. Humpbacks breaching a few hundred yards off the bow has a way of making the season feel official.
5. The off-season is a secret
Cape winters are mild, temperatures often near fifty, snow a rare event. Come in the shoulder months and you get the same trails, the same beaches, and the same big skies at a fraction of the crowds and the rates.
6. History around every bend
This is Kennedy country, but it is also lighthouse country, whaling country, and the first landfall of the Pilgrims before Plymouth. The fifteen Cape towns each hold onto their own version of it.
7. It stays with you
People do not visit Cape Cod once. They come back, year after year, until the place becomes part of the family story. That is the feeling we try to capture in a Cape Cod wood chart: every cove and channel carved to its true depth, so the water you keep coming back to has a place on your wall the rest of the year.
Planning a trip, or remembering one? Explore the New England charts and find your stretch of coast.