I went up surfing yesterday morning and as I sometimes do, I started at Coast Guard Beach in Eastham and made my way up north, checking the beaches up the coast. The surf wasn't great, so I was trying to optimize the swell and surfer dynamics. I ended up stopping at Marconi beach in South Wellfleet.
For anyone that has not visited the National Seashore, it is a treasure (see below). In my opinion, one of (if not) the most beautiful places on earth. Thank you John F. Kennedy. These pictures were taken from the site of the former radio station site where Guglielmo Marconi (
) made the first transatlantic radio transmission from the USA to Europe.
Now, I haven't been down to the Marconi Station Site in many years. I actually ended up going down the off beaten road in search of the Park Service Dispatch center (which I didn't find). I decided to go out to keep going, I almost turned around, because I was thinking "there is nothing down there". It's ironic, because that's what makes the Seashore so breathtaking was what makes this site so beautiful, there is nothing, no houses, no people, no sign of human disruption, just nature.
When I got to the small parking lot at the end of the weathered asphalt road, I was speechless. For miles, all you see is beautiful windswept sandscape: comprised of sand dunes, beach grass, scrub pitch pine, wild cranberry, rosa rugosa, scrub oak and other hearty coastal plants. Then you have the cliff. While not technically a cliff, it's a wall of sand some 100 feet+, one of the highest points along the outer coast. From the observation platform, you can see the whole lower cape, from Chatham to Provincetown. From this spot, if you go down the dunes, you won't be coming back up.
Speaking of treasure, in this picture above, you can see a (blurry) vessel in the distance, a short ways off the coast. That ship is a part of a salvage operation of the pirate ship, Whydah.
http://www.whydah.com/
