Beech Forest Trail — Attraction in Provincetown

Beech Forest is a park with trails and ponds set in the Cape Cod National Seashore in Provincetown. There is a parking lot and picnic area. The main trail is an easy couple mile loop through the woods. In addition there is a bike path that runs through the area and out to the beach through the dunes. The bike trails go on for miles. There are also horse trails and other small trails that connect to Beech Forest and are great for more adventurous hikers. There are miles of dunes and woods to explore from the Beech Forest area. Among the many ponds, there are cranberry bogs where you can pick berries in season. This is a great area to explore very close to, but away from the hubbub of town. Amazingly, it's rarely even remotely crowded, and once you explore the areas off the main trails, you may see no other people. It's a pretty great place to visit. Provincetown is a beach town, and Beech Forest isn't far from the shore, but it's actually named for the many Beech...

It is REALLY fun to bring sunflower seed with you and have a variety of birds land on your hand to get them... But the Powers That Be REALLY, REALLY don't want you to do that.

As much as it pains me to say it - - the Powers are basically right. Mostly because, like anything that attracts a lot of people, it quickly gets out of hand, and becomes an unhealthy situation for the environment and the animals.

Last time I was there, there were dozens of piles of uneaten, wet, rotting and moldy seed everywhere near the parking lot, on top of discarded plastic bags.

It was like a badly run and maintained petting zoo. Who wants that? The birds were so overfed, they showed no interest in the few newer piles of seed, and I doubt that they, in that state, would land on anybody's body parts for any reason.

So... Go, have fun, but leave your...

This parking area is great for accessing the Province Lands Bike Trail loop. We did the full loop with our 7 year old who loved it. Gears were incredibly helpful for him but he still had to walk a few of the hills up. The downhills when you go clockwise seemed safe and fun for him and us. Minimal to no sand on the trail (apparently in season they sweep sand off the trails 1x per week so maybe we lucked out). Trail felt very quiet for a late morning bike ride in August and riders were all polite and enthusiatic about seeing a kid...