Back to Cape Cod: Exploring Eastham, MA with Kids

Travel dates: June 8-15, 2018

I didn’t grow up going to the beach. We lived north of Atlanta, so several hours from the coast. I think my pre-college oceangoing experiences were limited to a couple of Florida vacations and my 8th grade class trip to Jekyll Island. Dave grew up inland, too, but his family made regular summer trips to Falmouth on Cape Cod, where his grandparents owned a cottage. I made my first trip there with him when we were dating in college and countless trips since.

These days, we’ve come to appreciate the Georgia coast, and we’ve been to beaches all over, from South Carolina to Nova Scotia to California….but when I think about “the beach” Cape Cod is still the first thing that comes into my head.

So Atlantic Oaks Campground, in Eastham, was our longest stop of this trip–a full week. Well. It was a full week for Dave and the younger kids; Ari and I (and Dave’s dad) left a couple of days earlier to see Williams and Amherst in western Mass. We spent several days in Eastham on our 2016 east coast trip, and you can read about that here and about our day trip to Provincetown here.

I won’t do a full campground review of Atlantic Oaks here, since I did one last time….but I’ll note that we still really like it there and that they’ve added a nice new playground since our last visit. That slide was pretty terrifying, actually (in a fun way).

We were here with Dave’s family–his sister, brother-in-law, their kids, and his parents–so a lot of our week was spent meeting up with friends and family and just general hanging out and cousin time. Much of said cousin time happened at either Coast Guard Beach (on the ocean side) or First Encounter Beach (on the bay side):

Other stuff we did this time:

Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail

Not a long hike, as you can see, which Abe always appreciates. It was very cool to get to see a different kind of landscape; who knew there were swamps on the Cape?! This is one thing I love about Cape vacations, actually–I am not a hang out at the beach all day kind of person (none of us are), and the Cape has lots and lots to see and do besides beaches (lovely though the beaches are). Our swamp hike was lovely, but also very buggy. Forewarned is forearmed.

Fort Hill Trail

More hiking! This one is another mile loop, but it hooks up with another swamp trail if you want to make a longer, more varied hike. We actually got a little turned around here, so I’m not sure exactly where we hiked, but it was pretty.

 

Biking

One of the great things about Atlantic Oaks is that it’s directly on the bike path. We went for a 7 or 8 mile bike ride one day, which was lovely. I did wish that we’d set out with some kind of destination in mind (maybe lunch or a snack), though. I find bike rides a lot more fun that way.

Lighthouses

We visited Nauset Light and the Three Sisters. Nauset Light is the one you can go up to the top of; it’s open very limited hours (in the shoulder season, like when we were there, it’s generally just for a few hours on Sundays it looks like), and there’s no charge (donations suggested). At the top of Nauset Light there’s a cool hole in the floor where you can take this picture (with your phone. My real camera lens was too big):

The Three Sisters are just a short walk away, but you can’t go inside them.