Salt Pond Visitor Center, Cape Cod National Seashore

Cape Cod's shape is glacial — the whole peninsula a terminal moraine pushed south by ice — and the visitor center in Eastham sits beside a pond that started as a glacial kettle and eventually breached into salt water. That's the right place to begin understanding this coast. The Salt Pond Visitor Center is Cape Cod National Seashore's year-round orientation facility: museum, theater, ranger staff, and from the lobby, an unobstructed view of Salt Pond, Nauset Marsh, and the Atlantic beyond.