The first thing you see as you round the bend is the conical tops of the white marquee erected for a wedding which never took place.
Instead, the Kennedy family used the tent to attend Masses where they prayed for their missing cousin, John, his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren. But the prayers have been to no avail, and now there is no hope.
The front-page headline in the Cape Cod Times in the local shops said it all: "Hope fades to reality: They're gone."
Later yesterday the tent came down. The funeral Masses will be elsewhere. The 275 guests who came to celebrate the wedding of Rory, the youngest daughter of Ethel and the late Robert Kennedy, have begun to depart.
The patriarch of the clan, Senator Teddy Kennedy, drove out of the compound yesterday and headed for the nearby Cape Cod airport.
Earlier there had been another Mass and the telephoto lens of the media caught glimpses of Ethel and Teddy holding chalices for the worshippers to receive communion.
And like the day before, Ethel and some of her sons went for a short sail on the yacht anchored in the bay in front of their home. The sailing is clearly seen as therapeutic. A statement from Ethel and Teddy and the family was expected later. Up to now there has been, not surprisingly, a news blackout from the family.
As the mourning continues among the Kennedys, the action is taking place about 60 miles away, south-west of Martha's Vineyard island, which is just visible from Hyannisport. There the search for the missing Piper Saratoga light plane and the three bodies it may contain has been intensified.
The search ships towing their sonar scanning equipment are concentrating on a more limited area south of the island. Divers are now ready to go down 80 feet or more if any wreckage is detected by the ships. But some experts warn that there is no certainty in this kind of operation in the Atlantic Ocean.
Just three years ago, the wreckage of the TWA 800 flight which exploded in mid-air the other side of Long Island was eventually recovered, but it took months.
As the wedding guests and the sightseers around the Kennedy compound begin to slip away, the media keep up their vigilant watch in the quiet streets but held at a respectful distance by the local police. I counted 17 TV satellite trucks.
A walk along the beach brings you to within 100 yards of the famous front lawn where the Kennedy touch football games have been played since the days of the founding father, Joseph Kennedy, back in the 1930s. But police agents forbid nearer access and order the curious to keep below the seaweed line on the beach which divides the public property from the private.
The American flag in front of the biggest of the three Kennedy houses which make up the compound flaps in the warm breeze coming in from the Atlantic. Insiders say that the Kennedys don't call the three family homes a compound. Only the media do.
There are Irish inside the compound. Several third-level students on their J1 visas have got work with the Kennedys for the summer. Their friends working elsewhere in Hyannis are hearing that the Kennedys are "up and down".
An Irish priest, Father Michael Kennedy from the diocese of Waterford, a relation of the Kennedys, is also said to be saying Mass there and counselling the family.
At the weekend, the St Francis Xavier church back in Hyannis where the Kennedy family worships when on holiday was full at the weekend for the regular Masses. The altar was donated by Joseph and Rose Kennedy in remembrance of their son, Joe, who disappeared in an aircraft crash in the second World War.
But this is peak holiday season on Cape Cod, and Hyannis is full of tourists who make their way to and from the beaches in the broiling sunshine giving the batteries of TV cameras scarcely a glance.
In the Cape Cod Times, much space is given to the reactions of neighbours of the Kennedy estate, not at Hyannisport but on Martha's Vineyard, where Jacqueline Kennedy had bought a 400-acre property for $1.1 million in 1978. It was here and not at Hyannisport that the missing John Kennedy and his sister, Caroline, enjoyed the delights of Cape Cod over the past 20 years.
It was on the Philbin Beach below the estate that the first wreckage from John's missing plane washed ashore. It was here that he crashed his microlight aircraft several weeks ago breaking his ankle. There is speculation that this injury may have played a part in the crash of his Piper aircraft last Friday.
A few weeks ago, John Kennedy was coming in too fast in his motor boat to the small local harbour. The harbour master, Brian Vanderhoop, not recognising Kennedy, at first shouted at the owner to slow down. "Then I saw who it was and I said, `Oh, it's you John . . . Now slow down, John-John, slow down.' "
To the locals he was still called by his baby name of John-John, itself the result of a mistake of a reporter soon after he was born.
Now there will only be his sister Caroline and her family to enjoy the estate stretching over the dunes and beaches where he loved to swim, fly, fish and race his boat.
AFP adds:
Mourners continued to flock to Arlington Cemetery in Virginia yesterday, where President John F. Kennedy is buried, to express their grief over the apparent death of his son.
"It's a tragedy," said Mr Phil Fletcher as he stood before the tomb of JFK, who was assassinated in 1963.
John jnr had "represented the family well," said Mr Fletcher, a Florida native, noting that despite the media spotlight, he had led a simple lifestyle devoid of scandal.
"He was a down-to-earth man," said Mr Ivie Partridge, a Texan. "It's a great loss."
In New York, people gathered outside the Manhattan apartment John jnr shared with his wife. Some laid flower wreaths on the pavement, while others prayed before a makeshift shrine.