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Places to go in Massachusetts.

Springs, beaches, parks and gardens worth the drive. Save the ones you want to visit and tick off the ones you’ve been to.

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2 places

Coast Guard Beach Beaches

Coast Guard Beach

Eastham, Cape Cod, MA · Cape Cod National Seashore

Coast Guard Beach is the Outer Cape at its wildest, a long barrier strand backed by grass-topped dunes that the Atlantic carves and reshapes every winter. The old white Coast Guard station still stands watch on the bluff above, and the only way down is a shuttle from the Little Creek lot, which keeps the crowds honest and the sand wide. National Geographic once called it the best family beach in the country, but it earns its place on a best-of-the-US list for the cold clean surf, the seals offshore, and sunrises that turn the whole shoreline pink.

Race Point Beach Beaches

Race Point Beach

Provincetown, Cape Cod, MA · Cape Cod National Seashore

Where Cape Cod finally runs out of land, the dunes give way to three miles of pale sand facing open Atlantic, and the water just offshore drops deep enough that humpbacks and even right whales surface within sight of the towel line. Because the beach points west off the tip, it is one of the only stretches on the Cape where you watch the sun sink straight into the sea, often right behind the 1876 Race Point Light. Come for the surfcasters at dawn, the seals hauled out on the bars, and a horizon with nothing on it but water.