Driving Old King's Highway: A Slow Guide to Route 6A on Cape Cod

If you fly down Cape Cod on Route 6, you'll miss the Cape we live in. Route 6 is the highway. Old King's Highway — known to mapping apps as Route 6A — is the bayside lane that hugs the marsh and the cranberry bogs from Sandwich to Orleans, threading seven towns and 62 miles of sea captains' houses, antique barns, and shingled post offices that look the way they looked in 1890. Our farmhouse at Salty Doors sits right on it, in Brewster, half a mile from the bay. We drive Route 6A several times a week, and it is the first thing we recommend to every guest who asks what to do on the Cape.

This is our slow guide. We'd budget a full day, longer if you like to linger. Pack a hat, a book, and a cooler.

Why Route 6A is worth the slow lane

The road was laid out in 1684 — older than the country — and most of its 62 miles are now a federally designated Historic District. That status is the reason the gas stations are tucked back behind hedges, the signs are small and wooden, and you'll pass cemeteries from the 1700s without warning. Speed limits stay around 30 to 40 mph and stop signs come up fast. That's the point. You're not getting somewhere; you're already there.

A few things we've learned from doing it a lot:

• Start east or start west — we like east-to-west for sunset over the bay marshes, but the morning light through the salt grass between Brewster and Yarmouthport is the best argument for the other direction.

• Saturdays in August are slow. That's fine. Build in lunch.

• The numbered route on your map will sometimes say MA-6A. Same road.

• Cell service hiccups in a few stretches near the marshes. Download your map before you go.

Starting in Sandwich

If you drive on from the Bourne Bridge, you'll be in Sandwich within fifteen minutes. This is the oldest town on the Cape, founded in 1637, and the western anchor of Old King's Highway. Park near the Dexter Grist Mill and walk to Shawme Pond. The mill still grinds corn in season, and the swans on the pond do not care that you're trying to take a photo.

From there, the Sandwich Glass Museum makes a good rainy-morning stop, and Heritage Museums and Gardens, just outside downtown, can absorb a full afternoon if you have it. We send guests there for the hydrangea trails in July and for the antique car collection any month of the year. A breakfast tip: the Brown Jug, a wine and provisions shop on Jarves Street, packs the kind of picnic that will earn you points later in the day.

The middle stretch: Barnstable, Yarmouthport, and Dennis

The Cape thins through Sandwich and West Barnstable, and then the road opens into a series of small village centers, each with one or two shops worth a stop. In Barnstable Village, the old courthouse and the Sturgis Library — built in 1644 and the oldest building housing a library in the United States — are both right on Route 6A. Wander.

A few miles east, Yarmouthport hides one of our favorite small bookstores, Parnassus Book Service, in a barn behind the road. The owner has been there longer than we have been alive, and the inventory tilts toward Cape Cod history and out-of-print fiction. Across the street, the Hallet's Store soda fountain still pours an honest milkshake. From here through Dennis you'll pass a dozen barns selling sea chests, ironstone pitchers, hooked rugs, and the occasional ship's wheel. Stop at the ones whose signs make you smile.

Dennis is the geographic middle of the Cape, and on Route 6A that means the Cape Playhouse, the oldest continuously operating professional summer theater in the country. If your day on Old King's Highway happens to land on a matinee, a two-hour show in a 1927 barn-turned-playhouse is a fine way to break up the drive. Two blocks from the playhouse, the Cape Cod Museum of Art is worth a half hour. Two blocks the other way, the Mercantile is good for coffee and the kind of small gift you didn't know you needed.

Brewster: where we live

This is the stretch we know by heart. Route 6A through Brewster is six miles of low stone walls, sea captains' homes, the Brewster General Store at the four-way, and our front yard. A few stops we'd plan a day around:

• Cape Cod Museum of Natural History — trails out to a tidal flat and one of the best small-museum dioramas on the East Coast. Time it with low tide and walk the marsh boardwalk.

• Drummer Boy Park — picnic tables, a windmill, gazebo concerts on Sunday evenings in summer.

• Brewster Store — penny candy, hand-painted signs, the kind of porch where you'll talk to a stranger about their dog.

• Nickerson State Park — 1,900 acres of pine forest and kettle ponds, bike trails to the rail trail, a campground if that's your vacation. Day-passes are easy.

The bay beaches off Route 6A in Brewster — Paines Creek, Crosby Landing, Linnell Landing — give you the long, flat low-tide walks the Cape is famous for. From our farmhouse, Paines Creek is under five minutes by car.

If you're researching where to stay along this stretch, our Brewster compound covers most preferences. The historic 1890 farmhouse, the Captain's House, sleeps eight inside a sea captain's home. We also have three one-bedroom cottages — Blue Sky, Seagrass, and Whitecap — plus the Pinch of Salt studio, a converted 1890 welder's cottage. Groups can book the whole compound for reunions.

East to Orleans, where the highway ends

Past our front door, Route 6A keeps going east through East Brewster — past Cobie's clam shack and the Snowy Owl coffee roastery — and crosses into Orleans, where Old King's Highway officially ends at the rotary near the National Seashore. If you have the daylight, push on to Skaket Beach for the sunset and the longest, flattest low tide on the bay side. Bring chairs.

That's the day. Coffee in Sandwich, a bookstore in Yarmouthport, theater in Dennis, a marsh walk in Brewster, sunset in Orleans. About 50 miles, give or take. Eight hours if you do it right.

The mistake we see guests make is treating Route 6A like it's a way to get to a beach. It is the beach trip. If you arrive at your destination at the end of the day with one or two small towns still on your list, you've done it right.

Want a base camp on Old King's Highway itself? Our Salty Doors compound sits directly on Route 6A in Brewster, halfway between Sandwich and Orleans, which makes a day-trip in either direction equally easy. Book direct with the owners for our best rate, our actual phone number, and a hand-drawn marsh map left at check-in.