Route 6 runs down the length of Cape Cod like a spine, and in Eastham it finally stops pretending to be a highway. The trees get lower and scrubbier, the sky gets bigger, and somewhere around here you realise the land has narrowed to a strip of sand with the Atlantic on one side and Cape Cod Bay on the other. Eastham is the gateway to the Outer Cape, and it has the practical side of that job: a proper town of a few thousand year-round residents, with fuel, groceries and a decent chance of a coffee before you commit to the dunes.
The riding is gentle rather than thrilling. This is a road for rolling along at a relaxed pace, pitch pine and scrub oak crowding both sides, and the real pleasure is in the detours. The side roads toward the ocean side lead to the Cape Cod National Seashore, which protects most of the outer beach from here north to Provincetown. The Salt Pond Visitor Center sits right off Route 6 and is a sensible place to learn what you are looking at. Go early in the morning or on a shoulder-season weekday; in July and August the whole peninsula funnels onto one or two roads and the traffic crawls.
The history here is thick for such a flat place. Eastham was settled by Pilgrims from Plymouth in the 1640s, and the Cape's first explorers reportedly came ashore near here before they settled on Plymouth. The old windmill on the green is among the oldest on the Cape, moved to Eastham in the 1790s. Out on the ocean side, Henry Beston spent a year in a tiny shack on the dunes in the 1920s and wrote The Outermost House about it. The shack was swept away in the great blizzard of 1978, which tells you something about the beach. Nauset Light, the red and white lighthouse people photograph, had to be hauled back from the eroding bluff in the 1990s, and the sea is still taking the cliffs.
The nature is the reason to come. Salt marsh, tidal creeks, cranberry bogs, kettle ponds left by the glaciers, and in the right season a cold, clean smell of salt and bayberry. The Cape Cod Rail Trail also begins nearby, though it is for bicycles. Take the wind seriously on a bike: crosswinds on the open stretches can be stiff, and sand drifts over the lot edges near the beaches, so go slowly on gravel.
For food, the Cape clam shack tradition is alive here, and fried clams, chowder and lobster rolls are the sensible orders. Orleans, a few minutes south, has more of everything if Eastham looks thin.