Cape Cod, Barnstable County, Massachusetts
The Upper Cape at the canal, the Mid Cape around Hyannis, the elbow at Chatham and the Outer Cape running up to Provincetown are not the same holiday. Neither are the cold Atlantic surf beaches, the warm tidal flats inside the hook and the gentle water on Nantucket Sound. Work out which one you want before you book a town.
UnsplashToday
Two numbers matter more here than the forecast headline. Sea temperature, because the Atlantic beaches can sit fifteen degrees colder than the bay on the same afternoon. And the tide, because on the bay side it decides whether you are swimming or walking out across half a mile of sand flats.
60°
Sunny · feels like 51°
TodayHigh 64° · Low 60°
Sunrise 6:28 AMSunset 6:38 PM
Good conditions for trail time and the park, though it is blowing hard on open water.
Updated
Full forecast and tidesBoatingPoor
Seas around 4.1 ft with 25 mph of wind. Expect a rough ride and possible cancellations.
SwimmingPoor
Water at 66°F is cold for swimming without a wetsuit. Surf around 4.1 ft.
FishingFair
Seas near 4.1 ft — stick to inshore creeks and sounds today.
Updated
Late morning, 12 PM – 6 PM
Good conditions for trail time and the park, though it is blowing hard on open water.
Outdoor comfort73 out of 100 · Good
Sweet spot around 12 PM at 62°F.
Updated
Places
A hundred-foot sand cliff above an empty ocean. A lighthouse that was towed 336 feet inland to stop it falling off the edge. A fish pier where the day boats unload in front of an audience. A monument of Siena granite at the end of the hook, climbed by ramp rather than by stairs.
Park
Forty miles of protected Atlantic shore, six guarded ocean beaches, and one $25 vehicle fee that covers every one of them for the same day.
3–8 hours$25 per private vehicle per day, valid at all six park beaches. $60 annual park pass.
Landmark
The red-and-white tower on the potato chip bag — built in Chatham, moved to Eastham in 1923, and hauled back from the cliff edge in 1996.
0.5–1.5 hoursFree to visit the grounds and the Three Sisters. Tower tours are volunteer-run, often by donation.
Beach
The beach at the outside of the fist, facing north into deep water — the one place on the Cape where whales are visible from a towel.
2–6 hoursNational Seashore fee: $25 per vehicle per day, or $15 per person on foot or by bicycle.
Landmark
A 252-foot granite campanile modelled on a Tuscan town hall, climbed by ramps, with the best view of Cape Cod's geography from anywhere.
1–2 hoursPaid admission covering both the tower climb and the Provincetown Museum. The grounds are free.
Book it
Cape Cod has a small bookable market — a few dozen products, most of them under a hundred dollars — and we would rather show you six good ones than pad a page. Whale watching out of Provincetown and Barnstable is the vertical with real depth. Seal trips from Chatham and the island ferries do the rest.
Bookings here go through Viator, who pay us a commission. You are charged the same either way, and the commission had no say in this list.
Why we chose it
A morning departure from MacMillan Pier, three to four hours, naturalist aboard, on the bank within half an hour of leaving the dock. Nothing else bookable on Cape Cod is in the same category. Take the first sailing of the day, dress for fifteen degrees colder than the town, and give it a spare day in your itinerary in case the fog wins.
Walking Tours
Chatham Bites and Sights Walking Guided Food Tasting Tour (opens in a new tab)
Taste your way through the heart of Cape Cod on a relaxed, flavor-packed food tour through Chatham’s most iconic streets and hidden gems…
3 hours
Prices checked
Why we chose it
The lowest-priced scheduled departure buys the same sanctuary, the same whales and the same naturalist commentary as the dearest one, because every boat out of Provincetown works the same ground. What you give up is the choice of hour and a quieter rail. On a coast where this is the most expensive thing most people book, that is the right trade.
Private and Luxury
Cape Cod Mayflower Trolley Tour (opens in a new tab)
Tour Provincetown aboard our authentic Trolleys featuring the history of the Mayflower's first landing, the development of our famous art…
50 minutes
Prices checked
Two ways to do this
Shared trips are the cheaper ticket for one or two people. Once you are a party of four or more, a private charter is often close to the same money per head and runs to your schedule rather than the operator's. Both are listed here so you can do the arithmetic.
Best value for a group
Excellent Quality
RideAway Adventures has been awarded the best tours on Cape Cod 12 years in a row. We have the only fully ACA certified guide staff on…
2 hours
Prices checked
Private — just your party
Walking Tours
Toast to Ptown’s past on a Commercial Street stroll blending craft cocktails and bohemian history. Perfect for drink lovers and history…
1–2 hours
Prices checked
Start here
What we tell people with five days and a rental car. Each entry says which of the four stretches it sits on and roughly how long the drive is from the bridges, because an hour and a quarter in April is well over two hours in August and nobody warns you.
Things to do
Cape Cod has one world-class bookable experience and this is it. Five miles north of Provincetown, under water that looks like any other water, sits…
6 places
Things to do
The reason a bicycle works so well on Cape Cod has nothing to do with the terrain and everything to do with a railway company going bust. The Cape…
8 places
Things to do
Cape Cod has more lighthouses than any comparable stretch of the American coast, for the unromantic reason that this peninsula sank an extraordinary…
10 places
Things to do
Two islands sit off the south side of Cape Cod and both are close enough to visit for the day, which is why half the people staying on the peninsula…
8 places
This season
The sharpest season on this network. A large share of the Cape closes between Columbus Day and Memorial Day, whale-watch boats run roughly April to October, and the warmest sea of the year arrives in early September after the crowds have gone. This is the module to read before you book anything out of season.
September is the local's answer and the best three weeks of the year. The children have gone, the water is at its warmest of the entire season because the ocean lags the air by about two months, the light goes long and gold, and rates fall the moment Labor Day passes. October holds most of that with cooler water, cranberry harvest in the bogs and the scrub oak turning rust across the Outer Cape.
Then the shutter comes down. A large share of Cape businesses close between Columbus Day and Memorial Day, and by November you are choosing between the towns that stay open — Provincetown, Hyannis, Falmouth, Chatham to a degree — and a lot of dark windows everywhere else. Check that a specific restaurant or museum is trading before you drive an hour for it.
November brings something you will see nowhere else on this network: cold-stunned sea turtles washing up inside the hook of Cape Cod Bay, where the geography traps them, and volunteer patrols walking the bay beaches after dark to find them.
Guide hub
President Kennedy signed Cape Cod National Seashore into existence on 7 August 1961, having co-sponsored the bill as a senator for Massachusetts a…
Things to do
The reason a bicycle works so well on Cape Cod has nothing to do with the terrain and everything to do with a railway company going bust. The Cape…
Guide hub
Ask somebody who has been coming here for thirty years where to stay and they will not answer with a town. They will ask you two questions first…
Things to do
Off the elbow of Cape Cod, on sandbars that appear and vanish with the tide, lies one of the largest concentrations of seals on the eastern seaboard…
Index
Twenty-two ways into the Cape, from forty miles of protected Atlantic shore to a wet Tuesday in Truro that needs an indoor answer. The Seashore, the whales and the towns are the deep pages, because that is where this place is genuinely unlike anywhere else on this coast.
News
Beach water closures after a confirmed sighting, National Seashore lot and trail status, bridge works and canal traffic advisories, ferry cancellations in fog, and the autumn roll-call of which towns have shut for the winter. Short items, checked before we post them.
Closure
The Cape's season is sharper than almost anywhere on the American coast. Knowing which half of the peninsula stays open is the difference between a good winter trip and a wasted one.
Beach update
September has the warmest sea, the emptiest sand and nobody watching the water. The two calendars do not line up, and the gap catches people out every autumn.
Travel alert
A purple flag with a white shark silhouette is an instruction, not information. Here is the protocol behind it, stated the way the National Seashore states it.
Last updated . We date every item so you can tell how old the information is.
Who you are with
Families belong on the bay or the Sound, not on the outer surf. Couples get Provincetown and the 6A villages. Anyone on a budget gets forty miles of protected shore for the price of a parking pass. And if it rains for two days, there is more indoors here than the postcards suggest.
With children
Who it suits
The difference between a good Cape Cod holiday with children and a frustrating one is almost entirely a matter of which water you put them in…
Two of you
Who it suits
Cape Cod is a better place for two people than for twenty, and it is at its best in the months when families cannot come. That is not a consolation…
On a budget
Budget
Here is the thing about Cape Cod that nobody says plainly: almost nothing on this peninsula charges admission. The national park does not have a…
It is raining
Who it suits
Rain on Cape Cod does not behave the way beach-holiday rain is supposed to. There is no wet season here and no dry one. The peninsula gets something…
Where things are
The map does the job a paragraph cannot: how far Provincetown really is from the bridges, which beaches face the open Atlantic and which face the bay, where the ferry ports sit, and why a place that looks like an hour on the page takes two and a half in August.
Every place shown on this map is also listed below as a link, grouped by area.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Guides
Which of the three coasts to swim on and why they differ. How the town beach sticker system actually works. What a whale-watch trip to Stellwagen Bank is like when the sea is up. And how to spend a week on the Outer Cape without a car.
Guide
Grey seals came back, and white sharks followed them. This is what the National Seashore and the shark researchers actually tell people to do, without the softening.
9 min readSilas Crowell
Guide
Three thousand six hundred people in February and sixty thousand in August, at the end of a road with no alternative. How you arrive decides how much of the day you keep.
8 min readNadia Petrakis
Guide
The whales are five miles off Race Point because a glacier left a sandbank there. Which pier you sail from decides how much of your trip is spent looking at open water.
9 min readSilas Crowell
Last updated . Guides are revisited when prices, hours or access change.
About us
We say when a beach lot is sticker-only, when a town is shut for the winter, when a boat will not run in fog, and when we have not been able to confirm a price. We state the shark guidance as the National Seashore states it rather than softening it. Where a booking earns us a commission, the link says so.
We are a small editorial team that covers Cape Cod and nowhere else on this site. Everything here — the descriptions, the comparisons, the reasons one boat suits a family of six better than another — is written by us. Nothing on this page is an operator’s marketing copy reprinted as if it were ours.
We name what costs money and roughly how much, we say when a car park fills by mid-morning, and we say when a boat only runs between April and October. Where we have not been able to confirm a price or an opening time ourselves, we say that too rather than guessing — hours and fees change seasonally, so check before you travel.
Our news items are assembled from verified sources and are labelled where they were machine drafted; every one is checked against the source before it is published. Our editorial standards page sets out the whole method, including how we correct an error once we know about it.
Last updated — the date an editor last went through this page end to end.
Keep in touch
One email a week: what has opened or closed this week, sea temperature and beach water status, whale-watch and ferry running days, and the canal traffic outlook for the weekend. Most useful between October and May, which is when nobody else is telling you anything.
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