The Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk runs about one mile along the Atlantic, between Henlopen Avenue at the north end and Olive Avenue at the south. The wooden planks have been replaced multiple times after hurricanes and nor'easters - Sandy in 2012 destroyed substantial sections, and the city rebuilt within eighteen months. The boardwalk is wide enough for joggers, cyclists, and the heavy summer foot traffic. Bicycle riding is permitted only between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. during the May 15 through September 15 season, a rule the locals enforce strictly. Funland, the family-owned amusement park between Delaware and Brooklyn Avenues, has operated continuously since 1962. The rides are modest - a small Ferris wheel, a carousel, a roller coaster called Sea Dragon, the haunted house. Grotto Pizza on the boardwalk and the original Grotto on Rehoboth Avenue both serve the swirled-sauce pies the chain has been making since 1960. The Rehoboth Beach Bandstand, on Rehoboth Avenue near the boardwalk, hosts free outdoor concerts every Friday and Saturday night in summer.

Driving in Rehoboth Beach during the season is so unpleasant that the locals recommend visitors park once and walk. The advice has merit. Parking permits cost $250 for a seasonal transferable permit, $35 for a three-day weekend permit, or $10 for a single weekday daily permit, depending on what you need. Metered parking is $4 per hour as of 2024 - the rate jumped from $2 to address budget concerns. The Rehoboth Beach Park and Ride along Shuttle Road off Route 1 offers free parking with a frequent DART First State Beach Bus shuttle into town. Many visitors use it. The Jolly Trolley, a private shuttle service, runs between Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach throughout the summer with stops every half hour. The Lewes Park and Ride to the north offers another option. The town's small footprint - the entire city is about 1.6 square miles - means once you park, you can walk anywhere worth going. The bike-rental shops along Baltimore Avenue keep busy. There are no dedicated bike lanes, but the residential streets are quiet enough during daytime that cycling works.

Southern Delaware has 12 public golf courses, which is a remarkable density for a small region. The Rehoboth Beach area alone offers Midway Par 3, the Bayside golf club, Sussex Pines, Bear Trap Dunes, Baywood Greens, the Salt Pond - and several semi-private clubs and country clubs that accept guest play through hotel arrangements. The flat coastal-plain terrain, the sandy soil, and the long playing season (April through November) made the region a natural for golf development. The 1980s and 1990s real estate boom around Rehoboth turned dozens of farms and timberlands into housing developments anchored by golf courses. The retiree population from Washington and Baltimore moved in, played golf, and brought their friends. Today the golf economy is one of the year-round economic anchors of the Delaware beaches. Summer tourism funds the bars and beach rentals. Off-season golfers fund the kitchens and the maintenance staff. The Midway Par 3 Golf Course and Driving Range - a short, walkable par-3 between town and Route 1 - is the local favorite for casual rounds.

From late July through early October, dolphins are regularly spotted off the Rehoboth Beach coast. Pods of bottlenose dolphins - usually around 15 to 30 animals - travel north along the coastline in summer feeding on Atlantic menhaden. They sometimes come close enough to shore that swimmers can see them from the lifeguard stands. Charter boats run dolphin-spotting trips out of Lewes and the Indian River Inlet to the south. The Indian River Inlet, about five miles south of Rehoboth, was first cut by a hurricane in 1937 and has been stabilized with jetties ever since. The cable-stayed Indian River Inlet Bridge, completed in 2012, replaced an older steel-truss bridge that had become a structural concern. The new bridge is one of the most distinctive on the Atlantic coast - its four 248-foot pylons can be seen from miles inland. Indian River is now the central anchor for charter fishing, surfing, and beach access at Delaware Seashore State Park. The dolphins, the inlet, and the surf together make the southern Rehoboth coast one of the most active marine areas on the East Coast in summer.

Five Points is the intersection where DE-1 meets US-9 west of Rehoboth Beach. It is also where the heaviest summer traffic backs up. The 2010 expansion of DE-1 to three lanes in each direction helped, but the geometry of summer beach traffic - tens of thousands of cars trying to reach a small coastal strip on a Friday evening - cannot be solved by additional asphalt alone. Locals know the backroad workarounds: Plantation Road south to Warrington to Old Landing to Airport Road. Visitors who do not know the workarounds sit in traffic for two hours to reach the same place a local driver reaches in 35 minutes. The Saturday-morning beach traffic and the Sunday-afternoon homebound traffic are equally bad. The advice from the locals, repeated in every summer-rental contact and every guidebook, is to leave early. Friday morning by 6 a.m., Sunday evening by 9 p.m. The Delaware coast's reputation as a Mid-Atlantic getaway is partly built on its accessibility to the urban Northeast. The same accessibility means three states' worth of vacationers all converge on the same two-lane bridges and one resort town at the same time.