Lighthouse Beach — Attraction in Chatham

Delightful beach, my first time here despite being a Mass native. Was not crowded on the Monday I visited, social distancing possible. The dunes are a meter or two high, making it possible to move behind them when the tide is highest. A few notes:

While the "depth" of the beach (dune-to-ocean) is sizeable at low tide, it collapses to a mere 3 meters at high tide anywhere other than the narrow section directly in front of the parking area. Plan accordingly.

The parking area is technically an overlook that also serves as parking for the Coast Guard's lighthouse museum across the street. As such, it is limited to 30 minutes! Beachgoers should park at one of several paid lots nearby, for which a courtesy shuttle (golf cart style) is provided.

The sand here is nice, a wee bit coarser than that on the north shore (as compared to, for example, Crane's Beach), but photogenic. As such, sandcastles with a moat will drain almost instantly.

The water currents here are strong. While not so much a beach concern, non-local boaters are recommended to avoid exiting/entering the channel anywhere other than the southern inlet. Quite a few local fishing vessels can be seen regularly plying the channel.

There are quite a few seals who bask here, mostly on the isolated southern tip of Nauset Beach peninsula. But a few curious ones come close to the beach. There are also some small crabs in the shallows. Remarkably, we saw one of the few Horseshoe crabs not self-servingly butchered by the Medical...

Just so you know, the l-ooong walks south on Lighthouse Beach are over for the time being. Apparently, in April 2017, a few weeks before we arrived, a rather furious storm completely washed out the narrow sand and formed the latest cut. The beach-end is now only a little ways south of the lighthouse and almost across from (east of) the Outermost Harbor area and the current (at incoming and outgoing tides) is very swift here: no longer a wide and shallow wading area. We used to walk a couple of miles on this meandering peninsula of sand but now it stretches only a little more than 1/2 mile. Still interesting especially at low tide. A good number of varied shorebirds make it a temporary home. The rest of the former south beach is completely cut off from Lighthouse beach and quite aways to the east where it forms its own long island. You now need a boat to get there: alas, that is the way of the Cape! We...

Gorgeous beach, hardly marred at all by the large sign with a big picture of a great white shark on it. There is a small amount of parking on the road, opposite the lighthouse. The beach looks out onto what appears to be a spit of land, but is actually an island; so it feels as if you are on the edge of a peaceful lagoon. The water is very shallow and there were quite a few people swimming and jet-skiing and enjoying the water when we were there. Nevertheless, we only paddled because we had decided to visit Chatham that afternoon and didn’t want out plans disrupted by a...