The Barnstable County Fair (in West Falmouth) is popular weeklong family tradition. Local and national musical acts, a midway, livestock shows, and horticulture, cooking, and crafts exhibits and contests.

Straight as a ruler, the Bass Hole Boardwalk off Centre Street from Route 6A in Yarmouthport, is the prime feature at this small, almost too mellow beach. When you’re not gaping at the scenery, which was once an 18th-century shipyard, check out the fiddler crabs, horseshoe crabs, small fish, great blue herons, and other critters that now ply these waters....

The latest venture for Roadhouse Café owner Dave Colombo, Black Cat in Hyannis offers a casual waterfront feel and quite good fried and baked seafood staples — fish and chips, scallops, seafood platter — while kicking casual up a notch with the likes of pan seared scallops with strawberry pineapple risotto and lobster ravioli. Gourmet burgers and salads, too. Stick...

Put a quarter in the nickelodeon (allowing for inflation) and grab yourself a coffee and pastry, just like they did before national corporations hijacked this quaint and neighborly routine. At the Brewster Store in Brewster, you shed about a hundred years and relax into a kind of nostalgia you wish you’d see more of. Sit outside in an old church pew...

In 1961, newly elected President John F. Kennedy, Senator Leverett Saltonstall, and Representative Hastings Keith championed a bill to turn more than 43,000 acres into the Cape Cod National Seashore (CCNS), protected forever from further development. (About 600 private homes remain within the park.) Today, more than 5 million people visit the CCNS annually, situated between Eastham and Provincetown. The excellent...

Chapin Memorial Beach in West Dennis is a local favorite for sunsets. At low tide, you can walk a mile before you hit water. That’s what also makes this a favorite clamming spot. High tide brings striped bass and anglers. Barnacle-studded rocks deposited by the sea make foot protection a must. This beach is also popular with four-wheelers.

“Chappy”, as locals call the Chapoquoit Grill in West Falmouth, has been popular since the day it opened its doors in 1993. Everyone welcomed the innovative cuisine with open arms — maybe even too much so, since you must arrive by 5pm or be prepared to sip wine in the bar until they finally call your name. When you are...

At 8 o’clock sharp, when the band leader turns to the crowd and shouts “Hi-de-ho,” the audience of locals and visitors shouts it right back at him. The Chatham Band Concerts in Chatham has begun, exactly as it has since it began in 1931 (minus four years due to WWII). About 40 band members of all ages fill the gazebo,...

Time, tides and erosion wait for nothing…. Strong currents and dangerous shoals necessitated a light to guide heavy maritime traffic safely around these waters in the 19th century. So Chatham Light (in Chatham) was built in 1808 and outfitted with two 40-foot towers set 70 feet apart. By 1841 the towers had to be replaced with two 30-foot towers; a...

Long before it won the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize for children’s bookstores in 2002, the excellent Eight Cousins Children’s Books in Falmouth enjoyed broad and deep roots in the community. It was named for one of Louisa May Alcott’s lesser-known works. Your inner child will exalt in the selections here, even if you don’t have kids to bring along...

Begun in 1972, the Falmouth Road Race is the event of the year in Falmouth and Woods Hole. The internationally-renowned 7-mile seaside footrace is a quite a party. Make hotel reservations incredibly early (or avoid the area entirely when planning your summer holiday). The race begins at Woods Hole Community Center and ends at Falmouth Heights beach.

Most folks don’t come to Fort Hill in Eastham looking for a fort — they seek birds, sweeping views of the ocean,  some long steps, a boardwalk through a marsh, and a brooding forest of Red Maples that burst into flames in the autumn. Not that there ever was a fort here: The hill, one of the highest points around, was...

A visit to Gina’s — a mainstay in Dennis since 1938 — immediately evokes the feeling of summer. In fact, if I am passing through town, I would not miss a visit to this lively eatery (with its down to earth bar and equally earthy setting). Chef Chris Lemmer has been whipping up fabulous northern Italian dinners here since 1990....

“Tis a wonderful thing to sweeten a world which is in a jam and needs preserving,” sums up the philosophy of renowned children’s author and naturalist Thornton W. Burgess (a Sandwich native). Young Thornton wandered these woods adjacent to Ida Putnam’s vintage jam kitchen, which still cranks out an array of fresh jams almost daily in the old, aromatic cookery....

Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown is rockier than Race Point, but that only adds to its beauty. Just make sure you have beach and/or shoes of some kind and you’ll be fine. Plus, the notoriety about its rocks keeps those who require unbroken sand away, leaving more space for you to roll out your beach blanket and, BINGO! you’ve found...

Move over haute cuisine with Miro-like presentations. Since the seventies, the Impudent Oyster in Chatham has drawn a fiercely loyal following — and for good reason! The rustic vibe, with its peaked ceiling with exposed beams, skylights, and hanging plants, makes diners feel right at home. And whether you order spicy Portuguese mussels, Nantucket scallop sandwich, namesake oysters, or beer-battered fish-and-chips,...

Nobska Light in Woods Hole is built of cast iron with a brick lining and with a light that reaches 17 miles through the gloom of night. It’s perched on a soaring bluff that offers fabulous views for sunsets, the Elizabeth Islands, Martha’s Vineyard, and peering into the eponymous “hole” of Woods Hole. Built in 1828 as a Cape structure...

Your eyes keep drifting back to the boards on Sandwich Boardwalk. One says wryly, “Get off our board.” Another holds a thoughtful phrase. Another a riddle. Then your eyes are filled with sunshine dazzling in the marshland, sparkling in the grass. A blue heron probes a tidal pool. Another board catches your eye with a warm memorial to a family...

The International Booksellers Federation considers Titcomb’s Book Shop one of the 50 unique bookshops in the world, and for good reason. The Titcomb family has been in the book biz since 1969 and their passion for books of all kinds enlivens every inch of this three-story barn-shop. Hundreds of yards of handmade shelves hold more than 30,000 new, used, and rare...

Uncle Tim’s Bridge dates to 1844 and was informally called “the bridge over Duck Pond.” Somewhere along the way, a local named Tim Daniels (who encouraged people to call him Uncle Tim), who provided supplies for ships docking nearby, became associated with the bridge. He died in 1893, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that people started referring to it as...