Road Tripping Through the National Parks: Maryland

The great state of Maryland is our next stop while road tripping through the national parks. Your best bet to prepare you for this trip is to fly into Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and grab a rental car. Your first stop on your trip is just a fifteen minute drive away.

Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine is a great place to start your journey as it reveals a lot of the history that has occurred in Maryland. The park preserves Fort McHenry and the history behind our national anthem. The Battle of Baltimore occurred here, and Francis Scott Key was just offshore during it where he wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner”. The visitor center here is a nice, recently renovated building that does a great job highlighting the War of 1812 and Civil War era history that occurred here. In fact, a lot of that history (especially the Civil War) spreads throughout the entire state. Once you’re done with the visitor center you can spend hours touring the grounds. The fort itself has displays set up with historical information in each room and the outer walls reveal great views of the surrounding harbor and opportunities for bird watching. Once you are done there’s a Guinness Brewery nearby where you can grab lunch or dinner. You can also grab a hotel or other place to stay around the Piscataway River, which is about a ninety minute drive away. It sets you up for the next day.

Start your next morning with a visit to Thomas Stone National Historic Site. This park preserves the home of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. You can start by stopping in at the park’s small visitor center before heading out onto the trails. The main trail loops around the historic home and the family gravesite. If you want to continue on beyond that there are a surprising amount of trails within the park. However, they are all grass covered trails so make sure you do a tick check when you get back to the parking lot. Piscataway Park is only a thirty minute drive away. This park preserves some natural areas on the bank of the Piscataway River. The area has nice views but not much in terms of accessible trails. If, however, you are able to find a place to rent a kayak or canoe there are multiple launching sites within the park. Fort Washington Park, your next stop, is only thirty minutes away. Fort Washington Park preserves the eponymous fort, which was a 19th century fort that served as protection for Washington D.C. from attacks coming from the Potomac River. The park is in a beautiful area as the fort is situated on a few hills overlooking the river. There’s even a nice picnic area right on the river that you can walk down to. The fort is definitely in need of some repairs, but that makes the exploration of the fort quite interesting if a bit sketchy in some spots. You can now cross the Potomac and take the forty five minute drive to Clara Barton National Historic Site. This park preserves the home of Clara Barton during her later life. The NPS owned Glen Echo Park is also connected to the property. The entire area is quite nice so definitely take a walk around. If you want any sort of information about the park without taking a house tour you will have to go into the Glen Echo Park offices. The old school amusement park within Glen Echo Park gives the area a weird feel as the transition from there to the classical Barton house just a walk in the woods away is quite stark. You can finish up the day by camping at Greenbelt Park, which is a thirty minute drive away. Greenbelt Park preserves a bit of land that allows cheap camping opportunities that have easy access to Washington D.C. by way of the Metro. The park itself is kind of lackluster if you aren’t there for camping with just one trail that seems like it’s straight from your local park.

Your third day begins with a hour long drive to Monocacy National Battlefield. The battlefield preserves the areas in which a few engagements between the Union and Confederacy occurred. I find it to be one of the more underrated parks in the system. The visitor center has a two story museum with a nice hike around the back of it along an old railroad line. The auto tour has multiple stops, each with an interesting hike or historic building to explore. Almost all of them have a notable feature such as a river, interesting plant life or major historical connection. You could spend an entire day here, but you still have two more stops to hit. The last stop you will go to for the day is Antietam National Battlefield, but along the hour-long drive to the park you can make multiple stops on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park. This park preserves a canal that stretched from almost the Pennsylvania border to the Potomac River at Washington DC. The canal was rendered obsolete as a way to transport goods once trains became the favored method, but the amount of this canal that has been preserved in this park is astonishing. You can actually backpack or bikepack the entire length of the canal, but just taking a few walks here and there on it will make you fall in love with the park. Meanwhile, Antietam preserves the land in which one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War occurred. You can get a lot out of this park by exploring the extensive visitor center and auto tour road. However, you are going to want to stop at the Burnside Bridge area and hike the bridge and the land beyond. It’s a rewarding hike that you won’t want to miss.

Your fourth day begins with a forty five minute drive to Catoctin Mountain Park. Catoctin Mountain Park was one of the many parks in Maryland and Virginia that was created during the Great Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps to bring Americans back into nature. It’s also not so secretly the home of Camp David, the presidential retreat. Therefore, it’s probably a good idea to check ahead that there are no security closures within the park as is the case when the president visits. If you are in the clear, the main highlight of the park is the Chimney Rock and Wolf Rock Loop Trail which brings you through this great wilderness while stopping by crevasse fields and weird rock formations. Stop in at the visitor center before you begin as it’s reminiscent of the visitor center at Rock Creek Park in Washington DC. Follow up your adventures here with the hour and thirty minute drive to Hampton National Historic Site. This park preserves the property of the Ridgley family, a family of tobacco barons. What makes this park interesting is the way the property is preserved. It’s located in a suburb of Baltimore so it’s a crowded area, and yet there are bits of wilderness in the park. Deer are quite frequent visitors here. The park also goes into as much detail on the lives of the slaves that lived here as they do the Ridgleys. In fact, going through the slave quarters is probably the highlight of the park in terms of historical detail. Another highlight is just how much of the property is preserved in its 18th century setting. I loved walking through the ice cellar in the back of the mansion. That concludes your travels on mainland Maryland as you can now take the two and a half hour drive to the Delmarva Peninsula by the Chesapeake Bay.

Your final day can be spent covering the Maryland section of the Delmarva Peninsula’s two national park sites. Your first stop is at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park. This park preserves the area where Harriet Tubman grew up as a slave and then reentered as a member of the underground railroad. The park is also within the boundary of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, one of the premiere nature sanctuaries on the Atlantic Coast. It makes for an interesting combination and a great day trip. The park’s visitor center and museum is the highlight of the park as it’s clear a lot of money went into the exhibits. The park, however, is quite new, and archeologists are still active in the area. In fact, archeologists just discovered the Tubman homestead within the Wildlife Refuge in 2021. Your final park is a ninety minute drive away in the form of Assateague Island National Seashore. Assateague Island National Seashore is one of the best parks in the area as it preserves the barrier island where wild horses roam. While the wildlife is what draws the crowds in, the well maintained trails and pristine beaches (especially compared to nearby Ocean City) are also a highlight. Be sure to check out the Life of the Marsh Trail as I always end up seeing a new species of wildlife that I haven’t seen before when I hike it. You can’t go wrong with finishing off your trip by watching the sun go down from the final overlook of this trail either.