Road Tripping Through the National Parks: Washington D.C.

The nation’s capital is our next edition of “Road Tripping Through the National Parks”. Washington D.C. might be the biggest treasure trove of national park sites in the entire country with well over twenty park sites in a comparably small area. If you are trying to see as many national park sites as you possibly can, this is a must visit area. Washington D.C. is serviced by three nearby airports and has a pretty reliable mass transit system in the Metro. So we would recommend bypassing a rental car and just using mass transit options. This article assumes you are getting a hotel somewhere near Metro Center and the National Mall, which serves as the central area of the city.

You can start your trip with a visit to the eastern side of the National Mall where the world famous Lincoln Memorial is located. You can spend a good thirty minutes here checking out the stairs, which have a few historical markers including where Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech was located, and the inner monument room with Lincoln’s famous statue. Work is currently being done to expand the memorial into a lower lever inside the inner monument room so it may take longer to explore in future years. Take a right out of the Memorial and take the five minute walk over to the Korean War Veterans Memorial. This is one of the lesser known monuments in the city, but the field of soldier statues makes for one of the more interesting designed ones. Take a walk through the memorial and then turn back towards the Lincoln Memorial. Steps away from the Lincoln Memorial, is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Once again, this is a quick walk through for a memorial despite being composed of two parts: the Memorial Wall and the Three Servicemen Statue. Make your way west along the Reflecting Pool towards Constitution Gardens. If you make this walk on an early summer evening you will be treated to a display from fireflies so that makes it my favorite time of year to visit. Constitution Gardens is another easy walkthrough. It offers great views of the Washington Monument and is one of the best places on the National Mall to go birding. When the area is not in a drought or under water restrictions, you can take a bridge to the middle of the pond that forms here to view plaques dedicated to the signers of the Declaration of Independence. From here, walk over to the World War II National Memorial at the end of the Reflecting Pool. This is a more intricately designed monument than many in the area as it weaves the history of World War II through multiple forms of art. Once you're done, you can head to your final monument before breaking for lunch: the Washington Monument. The top of the monument has the best views in town as you can look down into the White House, Potomac River, National Mall and Lincoln Memorial. However, you need to get a reservation at recreation.gov beforehand. It’s well worth it to spend the few dollars it takes to make a reservation, as the elevator ride up the monument also does a great job revealing the history of this monument. The building in front of the Washington Monument is the closest thing that these parks have to a visitor center at the moment, but its main focus is selling gifts and dispensing remaining Washington Monument tour tickets.

There are multiple concession stands and food trucks on the National Mall, and if none of those entice you, many of the Smithsonian museums scattered through the National Mall have cafes. After lunch, walk on over to the National World War I Memorial, which is in between the White House and the visitor center for the White House. The memorial is pretty simple at the moment with a water theme similar to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, but it's one of our newest national park sites and is still being renovated. It still is visually stunning in its infancy. When you’re done, cross the street to the White House visitor center. Getting a tour of the actual White House will be quite difficult, but the visitor center offers a surprisingly great experience. It functions more as a museum and has many artifacts from previous presidents such as Lincoln’s letter seal and Woodrow Wilson’s typewriter. I have been there a few times and it’s consistently updated with each new administration that enters the White House. After leaving the visitor center, you finally begin the long walk to the western end of the National Mall. Your first stop is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National Monument. This is another one of the newer additions to the city. It’s much more updated than some of the other monuments in the area so it has its own visitor center and usually has a ranger or volunteer hanging around the outdoors portion of the monument to provide some commentary about Eisenhower. The monument is divided into two sections: his time as a military leader and his time as president. So it's a pretty in depth experience despite the monument’s seemingly simple design. At the very end of the National Mall, is the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument. This park commemorates the women’s suffrage movement, and does a fantastic job at doing so. The park is mainly located in one two story building, which now functions as a museum. I visited the park when it was quite new to the national park system, and yet it still had interactive exhibits that went in depth on the movement’s successes, strategies and major leaders. That concludes a long first day, but all of these parks that I have mentioned are in relatively close distance so it is possible to get it all done in a day. If you want a good place for dinner, check out the Old Ebbitt Grill.

Day two of your trip to Washington D.C. will be mostly focused on parks that are still in the central part of the city but away from the National Mall and Tidal Basin. You can start by taking the red line of the Metro to Cleveland Park. Here you can enter Rock Creek Park, one of the oldest parks in the National Park Service system. Rock Creek Park preserves what’s left of the northern Washington D.C. wilderness. If you take the Western Ridge Trail from the Cleveland Park metro stop and head north you will have the best adventure that this park has to offer. The first stop you will come to is the historic Pierce Mill, which offers a great photo opportunity. From there you can continue on until you get to the park’s visitor center: the Rock Creek Park Nature Center and Planetarium. The building has many programs and their planetarium shows are always a highlight. From there you can take the red line back to Metro Center. Take in lunch at the fantastic Elephant & Castle, and start your post lunch activities by walking right outside the door. This is actually another park site as you are currently walking on Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site. From there walk on over to Ford’s Theatre. The theater is still an active one, but it still makes the most out of the building with behind the scenes levels that go in depth about Abraham Lincoln’s legacy. My favorite exhibit is a multi-story stack of books that all cover Lincoln. The best part about the park, though, is across the street where you can tour the Petersen House where Lincoln died. The amount of artifacts that survive to this day in this house is shocking. From there either walk or take the yellow Metro line to Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site. This park preserves the home of one of the forefathers of African-American history preservation. Unfortunately, the park is currently undergoing reservations so you won’t be able to do a tour of the building. That being said, the surrounding area still has some surviving historical buildings and a couple of murals of Woodson so it’s still worth it to walk around. Once you’re done, walk a few blocks over to take the tour of the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site. The park preserves another mecca of African-American history and interprets the life of Bethune, who was a leading civil rights leader.

Day three of your trip will be focused on exploring parks by the Anacostia River and Tidal Basin. Take a morning ride on the green line of the Metro to the Anacostia station. From there it’s just a short walk to Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. This park preserves the home of Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist and women’s rights leader. The visitor center has a few interesting but small exhibits. The real highlight is the tour of the home, which is perched on a hill overlooking the visitor center. Once you conclude the tour, take the green line back to the city center and make your way over to the Tidal Basin. This is my favorite part of the entire city. It’s so beautiful, especially during the golden hours. Start by touring the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. This park has a fantastic visitor center across the street from the actual memorial so be sure not to skip it. The memorial itself is quite simple in design but is still effective. From there take the quick walk over to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. This is my favorite of the monuments in Washington D.C. as it has a complex four-room design that uses water and rock as a recurring theme. It packs quite a bit of history into the design, and if you overlook that, you can’t overlook the beautiful setting right on the Tidal Basin water wall. The final park on the Tidal Basin is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. With a classical DC design, the monument looks a bit uninspired at first glance after seeing so many similar designs nearby. However, once you enter the first floor of the memorial it’s hard not to marvel at the beauty of it. If you can find your way into the secret basement floor you will be treated to a great exhibit on the life of Thomas Jefferson. You can catch dinner at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, which is my favorite place for seafood in the city.

Your final day of the trip will focus on parks on the other side of the Potomac River. It’s not that bad of a walk from the city center, but, if you need to, take a yellow line Metro to the Pentagon station. From there it’s a short walk to Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial on the Grove. This is a simple but beautiful tribute to Lyndon Baines Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson. The park actually does a great job of portraying how important nature preservation was to Lady Bird Johnson. From there it’s about a twenty minute walk to Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial. This is the hidden wonder of Washington D.C. In a perfect tribute to the president that was most in love with nature, this park is hidden on a small island within the Potomac River. A land bridge makes access easy for walkers, runners and bikers. The island has multiple trails that all eventually lead to a courtyard in the middle of the island that houses the park’s tribute to Theodore Roosevelt with a gorgeous statue of the man as its centerpiece. Spend as much time as you want here as this is your last stop of this fulfilling trip.