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Race Point Beach

Photo: Giorgio Galeotti / CC BY 3.0 · source

🏖️ Beaches

Race Point Beach

Provincetown, Cape Cod, MA · Cape Cod National Seashore

About

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.

Highlights

Whales surfacing offshore (humpbacks in summer, right whales in spring)Rare west-facing sunsets straight into the AtlanticHistoric 1876 Race Point Lighthouse out on the pointSeals hauled out on the sandbarsThree miles of dune-backed sand at the tip of Cape Cod

Getting there

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From Pacific cliffs and Hawaiian bays to Outer Banks dunes, Great Lakes sand, and Gulf sugar, these are the beaches across the country worth the drive, the flight, or the ferry. Some you walk a mile to reach, some you take a boat or a ferry, and a few you just pull off the highway and gasp. The best beaches in America, coast to coast to coast.