Including Atlantic White Cedar Swamp National Recreation Trail
January 29-30, 2023
No snow, mild weather, and off-season equals the absolute best time to visit Cape Cod. I jumped on such a window as soon as I saw it open and spent a couple of days doing all the National Park trails.
Seriously – if you are allergic to crowds, heat, and pretension, then avoid this area between June and September. If you love nature, history, and friendly locals, then plan your visit for any other month. You’ll have the trails and beaches almost to yourself, and all lodging will be at least half the prime time cost.
There are eleven named and maintained trails within Cape Cod National Seashore. I’ll go through them one by one below.
Fort Hill Trail in Eastham. One mile loop
This easy walk leads to (1) a large rock used by the Wampanoag to sharpen tools and (2) views of Nauset Marsh.
Red Maple Swamp Trail in Eastham. A little less than a mile roundtrip.
This is a lovely lollipop meander through a red maple forest. It begins off Fort Hill Trail and is likely especially colorful during leaf peeper season.
I next headed up Route 6 a few miles to Cape Cod National Seashore Visitor Center, where I watched an excellent documentary on the geography and formation of the Cape. Two NPS trails begin a few dozen feet from the VC. The first I tackled was Nauset Marsh Trail, an easy loop that takes the trekker past, as one would expect, Nauset Marsh.
Buttonbush Trail begins right by Nauset Marsh Trail. This loop is less than half a mile long and is designed for the visually-impaired. The entire path is lined with a hand rope, and information signs are in English and Braille.
I then decided to drive to the northernmost NPS trail, Beech Forest Trail in Provincetown, and work my way south doing as many trails as I could before the sun set. I didn’t feel the need to go into the main bits of Provincetown as I have been-there-done-that during other Cape visits. I highly recommend you explore that area if it is your first time on the Cape, though.
Beech Forest Trail is a picturesque 0.75-mile loop, with a quarter-mile extension loop, through a beech forest with views of Beech Forest Pond. The quarter-mile extension is not pictured below; it’s a woods-walk over a small forested hill with a couple dozen steps.
Next on the list was Pilgrim Spring Trail in North Truro. This is a short and easy loop down to a spring representative of the first drink of water the Pilgrims experienced in the New (to them) World.
Small’s Swamp Trail is in the same vicinity (with the same parking lot) as Pilgrim Spring Trail. This 0.7-mile loop takes the wanderer through swamp and forest to a view of the salt marsh and the ocean. Archeological evidence of 7000 years of Native American presence have been found here.
I had just enough time to explore the Pamet Area Trails and head toward my lodging before the sun began to set. I drove to the parking area, which is unlike the others in that it is next to a Rec building so it feels like you’re trespassing, and walked across the street to the start of the trail.
This trail and extensions are less than straightforward. The trails themselves are clear with decent footing, but there a few herd paths that branch off and seem to go through private property. There aren’t many signs, and I could not find a paper map. My Gaia app shows trails going every which way, but real life didn’t match up to Gaia. I walked the extensions that seemed like the public ones: the little incline to Bearberry Hill, the sandy path to the beach, and the branch off the sandy path that lead to the Bog House and then the road.
January 30, 2023.
I got the remaining three Cape Cod NPS trails today. I began with the shortest left on my list, Doane.
In 1644, Doane and six other Pilgrim families moved from Plymouth to form a community in what would be soon be called Eastham. The 0.6-mile Doane Trail starts at Doane Rock, a glacial erratic, and leads to the site of the 1644 Doane Family Homestead.
Next up was one of my two favorites: Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail in Wellfleet.
This gorgeous and easy National Recreation Trail starts at the Marconi Station Area and loops through an absolutely fabulous white cedar forest/swamp. The beautiful red colors popped on my snow-less late January visit, so I imagine a fall hike here would be jaw-dropping.
The remaining NPS trail became my favorite. It’s an 8.8-mile loop through dunes, forest, and sandy beach.
Great Island Trail starts at the corner of Chesquessett Neck Road and Griffin Island. You walk down a set of stairs to a sandy path along a marsh, then through some dunes, along a beach, into a forest where the Pononakantis lived until smallpox decimated the population in the 1700s, through Middle Meadow Marsh, and all the way to where the tip of the land ends at the water. Facing south at this point, Wellfleet Harbor will be on your left and Cape Cod Bay will be on your right.
Timing is important; know the tide charts. The trail loops back along the beach, so go at low tide or prepare to be submerged. Also, have a compass. Seriously. I got turned around near an old tavern site in the Great Island woods and ended up wandering all around making sure I found the right path. You can’t get all that lost, since if you walk in one direction long enough you’ll see water and can then figure out which direction you should head based on the shoreline, but a compass will make getting back on track faster should you go the wrong way.
This was my favorite of the Cape Cod NPS trails since it felt more like a proper hike and less like an easy stroll. The mileage is decent, you walk on soft sand a lot which adds to the work-out, you end up four-ish miles from town way out in nature until the land stops, and the views vary between trees, sand, dunes, and bay. Except when I was along the beach near the end, I had the entire area to myself.
So ends my Cape Cod visit. It will be my last. No need for me to return as I’ve now seen and experienced everything of interest to me. Unless you count Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket as part of the Cape, which I don’t. I’ll head to both islands this spring to visit a National Natural Landmark and a National Wildlife Refuge.