Magical Cape Cod Kind of Day

We are way behind in getting travel posts published this summer because we're having too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

August 3, 2022

We have already spent one day exploring the National Sea Shore on Cape Cod, and more time on the water learning how to shell fish. But we found out that there is too much to see to fit it into just one day. For one thing, it takes a while to get here. Even with our great camping spot in the centrally-located village of Barnstable, it still takes about 45 minutes to drive to the entrance of the National Seashore. We explored the most southerly section earlier, so this day we drove to the most northern point at the Province Lands Visitor Center. Then we worked our way south from there.

After getting advice at the national seashore visitor center, we stopped in at Race Point Beach. The ocean water is perfectly clear, with a turquoise blue color as we looked to the horizon.

Fewer people make it all the way to these faraway beaches, so it took only a short walk up the sand to get away from the beach umbrellas. This unmanicured beach is littered with fresh sea weed and pebbles, but not a single sea shell in sight.

We had thought about taking a whale watching cruise off this tip of Cape Cod, but we didn't feel like we had enough time. Today we spotted a boat just off the beach, and discovered we could do some whale watching from the shore instead of from that very crowded boat. Of course, we didn't get as good a view of the whale that is swimming right behind the boat.

Instead of scanning the wide expanse of ocean for whales, we learned that we could just watch where the whale boats were. They are good at spotting the spouts that indicate that the whale is just below the surface. It looks like some of the passengers might have gotten wet from that exhale!

Sometimes whales seem to enjoy cruising with a boat, and this one stayed right behind this lucky whale watch tour.

We didn't see any fancy breaching or head shots, but we got lots of whale views from our spot on the shore at Race Point Beach.

This northern tip of the Cape is a great place for a bicycle ride on paved trails among the dunes. We probably would have explored that way, but we were trying to see as much as possible as fast as possible. So instead of bicycling, we drove the pickup to our second beach of the day at Herring Cove.

Where most of the beaches are devoid of shells, Herring Cove has lots of large white clam shells.

We are just around the corner and a couple miles from Race Point Beach that had no shells, and Herring Cove has shells that are bigger than Mark's palm.

It didn't take long to collect enough for the beach art project of the day.

It has already been a magical day on the Cape, and we just got started!

Besides clam shells, this beach also has these strange green sea plants that have washed ashore.

The base was made up of a hard tuber-like root. We have never seen anything like it on a beach.

That's what we love about walking on beaches--finding the unusual things that God sprinkles about. We also found these unusual tiny shells on Herring Cove Beach.

When held up in the light, these shells are translucent. We feel like we have found more magical wonders on the beaches of Cape Cod today!

From Herring Cove, we can also spot another lighthouse. It's possible to make a very long walk on the beach to get closer to Race Point Light.

But in the interest of seeing as much as possible today, we're settling for a zoomed-in picture of this 1876 lighthouse.

While we have driven by miles of pristine beaches to get to this far point of Cape Cod, a few people actually live here. The small town on this remote tip of the Cape is Provincetown. We were expecting a sleepy sea side village, but we found the opposite. The town population swells in the summer months when people make day trips via ferry boats from Boston. The tiny streets of Provincetown are closed to street traffic, and are patrolled by security in bright shirts.

Finding a parking place for our pickup would be impossible. Besides, we much prefer the solitude of national seashore beaches to the crowds and chaos of this little town that is known for its party crowd.

We stopped by the other man-made attraction in Provincetown--The Pilgrim Monument. It was built in 1910 to commemorate the first landing of the pilgrims here in 1620, and the signing of the Mayflower Compact in this harbor. While the history books tell us of the landing at Plymouth Rock north of here, they seemed to forget this stop on the tip of the Cape happened first. The memorial is 252 feet tall, and is the tallest all-granite structure in the United States. We could buy a ticket and walk to the top, but we are sticking to our busy schedule and just making a photo-drive-by.

That's because we've been given a hint about another beach that we need to see. We turned left at High Head Road and drove on a dirt road to a small parking area. From there, it was a 0.4-mile walk across the dunes.

But that brought us to an ocean beach that few people get to see. This is Meadow Beach.

Denisa already has her camera out, taking pictures of something at this lonely beach.

If you look closely, you can see the black heads bobbing in the water right beside the beach where we are walking.

We can see more than 100 seals playing right beside the beach this afternoon! They were probably laying on the beach earlier, but we were still very excited to see so many and so close!

Denisa didn't take a picture of every single seal, but it was probably close. So even though this seems like a lot of seal pictures, just know that she took a lot more.

There are gray seals, and we are seeing all different sizes in this large group. The males can grow to be eight feet long, and weigh over 700 pounds.

Not to be confused with the cuter harbor seals, these gray seals have small eyes and a horse-like noses.

We have never seen so many seals that were so close to the shore! It felt like we could easily reach out and touch them. But it would be silly to be in the water with so much shark bait. Now we can see why the sharks cruise this shore line.

Just in case you would think that Denisa only takes pictures of seals, she also took a few of the resident shore birds.

But it was just more unusual to see such a large group of seals. We enjoyed watching them interacting and playing in the surf. We have wandered into another of God's wonders on this magical Cape Cod kind of day!

It's hard to  leave such a beautifully special place--that we had all to ourselves!

But we finally pulled ourselves away from the seal beach, and made that long and sandy walk back to the pickup across the dunes.

Even though there are a dozen more beach stops we could make, it's getting late in the day. So we made only one more stop. There are more wild roses growing happily here in the sand. We're surprised to see a few blooms, because most of the flowers have long since disappeared. Where the early flowers were blooming, the rose hips have now swollen to bright red circles that are still pretty to photograph. We heard a young couple discussing what these bright red rose hips are. We had to chuckle when he finally determined that they must be beach tomatoes.

It was another walk in the sand, but we made it to our last destination of the day. The beautiful blue skies are nicely framing the Highland Lighthouse. A lighthouse has been guarding this beach in North Truro since 1798. This is the third light in this location, built in 1857. It is the oldest and the tallest on Cape Cod.

It's been another magical Cape Cod kind of day for us. While we feel like we could spend a whole summer exploring the different beaches on this cape, we feel so blessed that we got to visit this special part of the Eastern shores for three magical days.