- Henry David Thoreau
The trouble with standing on Cape Cod these days is that "all America" tends to be a lot closer behind you than you might prefer. Its main tourist haunts are packed in summer, its roads circled by a grim procession of crawling vehicles, searching in vain for some "unspoiled" bit of beach or "undiscovered" old town. Unless you have your own, preferably very secluded, place to stay, it's barely worth turning up at weekends, especially between June and August, and putting yourself through the hassle of trying to find what little available accommodation there is, invariably at premium prices. However, the place is undeniably beautiful and if you find yourself in the region midweek in May or September - when hotel prices are much lower, the crowds have thinned, and the weather usually very pleasant - it's certainly worth a visit.
Cape Cod was named by Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602, on account of the prodigious quantities of cod caught by his crew off Provincetown. Less than twenty years later the Pilgrims landed nearby; in the few months before moving on to Plymouth, they began the process, continued by generations of Europeans, of stripping the interior of the Cape bare of its original covering of thick woods. Today, much of the land on the Cape - from its salt marshes to its ever-eroding dunes - is considered a fragile and endangered ecosystem, a designation, however, that hasn't especially dampened the persistence of developers.
If you imagine the Cape as an arm, its upper section, the thirty-mile eastward stretch closest to mainland Massachusetts, would be represented by the biceps. Much of the worst beachfront development lies along the southern shore, and Hwy-28 , running from Falmouth via Hyannis to Chatham, gets especially clogged. Only once you get beyond the "elbow" and head north to the Outer Cape or, anatomically speaking, the forearm, past the spectacular dunes of Cape Cod National Seashore , do you get a feeling for why the Cape still has a reputation as a seaside wilderness. Provincetown , right at the end, is the one town on the Cape that can be unreservedly recommended.
Sadly, the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket , off the Cape to the south, are dependent on summer tourism for their livelihood. However, a trip out to Nantucket in particular does still evoke haunting memories of its proud seafaring days. Again, the off-season has a charm all its own, a time when you can sink into the rhythms of life on the island without the distraction of hordes of day-trippers.
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