September 30, 2022, we arrived at Cherry Hill Park (RV Park) in College Park, Maryland. This will be “home” for eight nights as we spend a week exploring Washington, DC. What a gorgeous park! It is immaculate with wonderful amenities, although we only visited the indoor hot tub one rainy evening.
We attended the 4PM information session provided to help people as they plan their time in the Washington, DC area. The metro/subway system was explained. It should be super easy to use. Afterwards I went to the office to purchase our SENIOR Metro passes. These are such a deal for seniors! We chose to drive from Cherry Hill Park to the College Park – U of MD metro station (Green/Yellow track)so that we could be more efficient with our time, and not stress if the bus for pick up from the park runs late, or having to wait for the right bus from the metro station back to Cherry Hill after a very long day. The station was only about 3 miles away, and had a nice parking garage that we felt very comfortable using. Parking was free on Saturday and Sunday. Make sure you have enough money left on at least one Metro pass though to pay when you leave on all other days!
It’s nice that so many of the Smithsonian Museums border or are near the National Mall. ALL Smithsonians are FREE! That is amazing and makes a visit to DC so incredible, and worth staying at least a week.
It has taken a lot of planning for us to make the most of our entire trip. Barry spent months and months prior to us leaving planning the nut and bolts of the entire trip. He organized the routes, figured out the amount of time we should dedicate to each area, where we would stay, and made park reservations as soon as he could. As with NYC, Washington DC needed further planning for daily, yet flexible, itineraries that would be manageable, yet allow us so to make the best use of our time. This was where I did my part. Knowing we would not be able to see everything DC has to offer, I started with a list of our priorities. I created that list based on our interests and the recommendations of friends of what they said were a “MUST SEE”! Next I worked at creating a balance each day. Some Smithsonians are quite intense emotionally, so it was important to keep that in mind as I prepared. While I refer to it as an itinerary it was flexible. We could tweak our plans after our main museum of the day or that evening as we looked at the next day’s plan and weather forecasts. We were extremely pleased with how well this worked for us. My favorite segment of our epic trip begins tomorrow!