We love Wellfleet because the beaches are beautiful and, even at the peak of the summer, it's never that crowded. The town is full of art galleries, and as long as your kids are well-behaved, they're always welcome. We always plan our activities around the tides (you always need to consider the tides at the ocean, bit it's especially true here if you want a sandy beach). Our daughter loves to collect hermit crabs, and there is no better place to do that than Great Island at low tide. When the tide is out, the beach at Great Island is a huge expanse of flat sand, you can wade out hundreds of feet without getting anything above mid-thigh wet and the water is, by New England standards, warm. As a bonus, there is free parking in the Great Island lot. In fact, free parking may be one of the best things about Wellfleet. There is a municipal lot at Mayo Beach, free parking on the wharf and free parking downtown. While many of the other beaches on the Cape may be more spectacular, the water is usually colder (they are after all, on the open Atlantic Ocean), parking fills up early, and it will cost you in excess of $15 for the privilege of parking your car on a patch of dirt.
This trip we managed to forget most of our essentials (water sandals, sunblock, etc.) so I ended up trying to walk out to one of the many sandbars that are exposed and almost exposed at low tide. About halfway there I began to notice a large number of sizable crabs (that is, those large enough to be able to get a claw around a foot or toe) and I began to wonder just how they would react to being stepped on. (See the photo of the crab hiding in the sand. Given another couple seconds and all that you'd see would a small depression in the sand with no other hint of what was hiding beneath.) Considering they can be aggressive little buggers, and I was in bare feet, I decided to abandon the walk and head back closer to shore where the wildlife is a little smaller. While we were chasing jellyfish close to shore we came across a larger crab (about a hand-span, claw-to-claw) that didn't seem interested in moving on, and when I gave it a tap on the elbow with our net, it just turned and brandished its claws at me. We decided to leave him alone and find another spot to chase jellyfish. This was the first trip we noticed jellyfish, and we discovered the trick to finding them is to look for their shadows. They're almost impossible to spot if you don't know where to look, but if you look for the distinctive shadow on the sand, you can follow back toward the sun and spot them. The shadows you want to look for will have some internal structure to them, and that's about all that distinguishes them from the shadows of the foam bubbles.
By the time high tide rolls in, all the shallows are under about 12 feet of water, and the beach is a narrow rocky strip. And, since the beach is so flat, the tide comes in fast. I mean one minute you're on dry sand then one wave rolls in and doesn't go out and you're suddenly in an inch of water that isn't going away any time soon.
If you do decide to make a day trip to the Cape from Boston or a little bit north, you'll want to leave as early in the morning as possible. Ideally, you should hit the bridge by 8 AM, so get up early, and grab breakfast on the Cape. Given that this is the family travel blog, I'll point out that there is a Friendly's just off highway 6 in Hyannis where you can feed and get going quickly and give the kids get a bit of a break without delaying things too much if your destination is farther. If you're heading farther out on the Cape, or want something a little different than an ubiquitous chain restaurant, there are a gazillion options on the Cape. On the food blog, I talk about a few in Wellfleet.
