A Zipline Harness is the New Black
If you live near Bethesda, within an hour you could be part of the latest extreme action craze: dangling from a steel cable and whirring from one big tree trunk to another. It seems that everyone’s trying zip-lining these days.
Before 2002, it would have been unlikely to have a friend share zip-line stories over drinks, but now you can’t hoist a beer without knocking into someone who’s harnessed up and zipped. And the number of thrill-seekers has been doubling each year since 2008. In our area, there are three nearby canopy tours and many more within a few hours drive.
Recently, I found myself sweaty-palmed and inching across slender balance beams suspended above the forest floor, wishing the obstacle course features of the park weren’t so darned high up.
It isn’t enough to just ride across vast clearings on your line, you also have to swing Tarzan-style into giant nets and crawl through hanging tunnels.
My kids loved it, though from now on, I’ll be quite happy to stay on the ground. You have until mid-December to try it for yourself and share tales of your own harness-fittings at this year's seasonal parties.
St. Michaels, MD for Your Girls’ Weekend
For me, besides the presence of your best friends, the perfect girls’ getaway includes three ingredients: physical exertion---preferably something outdoors; a bit of pampering; and good food (with a glass or two of wine). You’ll find all these in St. Michaels, Maryland and great shopping, too.
For your outdoor adventure, try biking along bucolic Eastern Shore bike paths and catch the ferry across the Tred Avon River to Oxford, a tiny coastal town with a peaceful waterside park.
Even if you take afternoon tea at the elegant Robert Morris Inn there, you should still indulge in a cone from the Scottish Highland Creamery before pedaling away. While it’s true that you’ll have had your fill of scones and Darjeeling, you’ll be burning lots of calories with your bicycling, so don’t miss the chance for a scoop at this shop. Owner Victor Barlow began working at an Italian ice cream parlor in Edinburgh when he was only 15 and he’s brought the “secret family recipes” to Oxford. It seems only polite to give them a taste.
Or, take full advantage of your watery location by booking a kayaking excursion. ‘Peake Paddle Tours offers guided boating trips through local salty marshes or freshwater streams. I recommend gliding along the waters that thread through Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge’s 25,000 protected acres (in nearby Cambridge). Fall is the best time to spot waterfowl or soaring eagles.
For pampering, head to the Inn at Perry Cabin’s Linden Spa for a floral-infused massage or pedicure. You and your friends can sip cool cucumber water while robed in terry cloth by the infinity pool while you wait your turn.
You won’t go wrong sharing a perfect thin crusted wood-fired pizza and salads at Ava’s. Or, if the Eastern Shore means steamed crabs to you, split a half-bushel in the screened porch dining room at the Crab Claw near the (very worth visting) Maritime Museum.
Attractive B&B’s dot the area. After breakfast at yours, find a few antique treasures to take home.
My friend Gail presses oranges each morning now with a green, cast-iron, vintage (seriously heavy) juicer she admired for its practical and sculptural appeal. We girlfriends were there to help her carry it to the car. Think of all the cool things you can help each other fit into the trunk---souvenirs of a great girlfriends’ getaway.
Visit the AVAM “Toot Suite”
If you’ve been meaning to visit the very-cool American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, now’s the time to go. Summertime Thursday evening admissions are free from 5 to 9, followed by movies shown under the stars on a 30-foot outdoor screen.
If you have (or if you are) someone who doesn’t mind a late drive home, this is a bit of heaven: An outdoor movie watched from a nice hillside after taking in a playful and expansive display of works by self-taught artists. You can bring a picnic along or buy popcorn and hotdogs on site.
The movies this summer celebrate the theme of the museum’s biggest current exhibit, "What Makes Us Smile?" co-curated by founder Rebecca Hoffberger, artist Gary Panter, and Simpson’s creator Matt Groening. Comedic films from “Airplane!” to “Some Like it Hot” are scheduled for screening. Click here for the line-up.
The museum itself is a joy. After checking out the whimsical sculpture garden and once you’ve admired Nadya Volicer's “Smile” welcome mat made from recycled toothbrushes, follow a hallway festooned with the boxes of your most beloved childhood board games, dangling model planes and helicopters to the three-floor gallery. It's the kind of place that features a massive collection of Pez dispensers and a Whoopee Cushion bench.
The day I visited, I lingered longest in a space staged as a bedroom featuring a bed with a headboard of beads and beetle wings made into an intricate and spot-on portrait of MAD Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman by artist Patty Kuzbida.
A glass case filled to brimming with vintage toys arranged in a scene both static and busy stood nearby, including a parade of every action figurine from under your brother’s childhood bed snaking around a double-decker London bus and toy cars of all makes and models.
Steps away, a dog made from guitar parts, picks, and sequins posed under an archway of coconut heads; an enormous and elaborate candy-dotted gingerbread house filled a corner of the room; a blue Electrolux refitted into a space rocket dangled from the ceiling; and this quote from Bill Cosby was painted on the wall:
“Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.”
If yours are back home, take them to see a free outdoor movie and the coolest art around at the AVAM in Baltimore.
Bonny Kilmarnock, Virginia
As a wrap-up to spring, friends from college, Louise and Becky, hosted a reunion of sorority sisters at their Northern Neck cottages for a weekend of reminiscing and a beer or two. I had grown up in Virginia, but for family road trips, we generally headed to the Shenandoah Valley, winding past farm-dotted hills and signs advertising tours of stalactite-filled caverns. When I got my driver’s license, I kept my wanderings to the Manassas Pizza Hut or battlefield parks. On occasion, I’d take a drive to see the big city lights of Fairfax. Somehow, during all of those years, I never made it over to my home state’s scalloped watery edge, only 75 miles from Washington, DC.
Like Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the Northern Neck has hundreds of miles of shoreline.
The landscapes, forested and engraved with creeks, made me think of Pilgrim and Indian scenes (the fake, happy ones with the sharing of tobacco and dried corn). Staring at the marshy undulating coastline, I had one of those history class fantasies: Chief Powhatan might paddle past out of the fog or a caribou could make its way to the water’s edge for a drink. The filmstrip narrator in my head reminded me that Native Americans were here tens of thousands of years before John Smith showed up in 1607 acting like he owned the place.
My friends' Northern Neck cottages were in Kilmarnock, a town that owes its name to Scottish settlers who were drawn to the tobacco economy and good farmland. A kilt-wearing bagpiper adorns the watertower and tartans grace the lightpost banners on Main Street. (The only sign of the Indians was a wooden one decorating a shop doorway.)
Kilmarnock is a wee, charming town with a handful of restaurants and shops for fashion and antiques. I found a sky-blue princess phone on sale at Twice As Nice on Main Street. (I dreamed of one of those phones all of my teenage years while waiting in line to use the single 10-pound monster that conveyed my countless hours of flirting and sighing through its heavy black mouthpiece in the 1970s.)
Nearby is Christ Church, a pristine example of 1735 colonial architecture, which holds a service once a year in May called the “Kirking of the Tartan.” The town’s bagpipe band plays and tartan-sporting congregants gather to commemorate Scottish resistance to attempts by the English to break the clan system.
You can stay in the Kilmarnock Inn. The guesthouses are named for the eight presidents from Virginia. Breakfast featuring fresh local food is included (blue crab Benedict or Virginia ham and eggs) and you’ll be just around the corner from that wee shopping street. Though the biggest draw to the area isn’t shopping, but frolicking on the river. Or my favorite coastal activity---daydreaming on the dock.
George Washington Slept Here
On my way home from a lovely weekend with college friends in Kilmarnock, Virginia, signs promising a glimpse of George Washington’s birthplace lured me off course. (Remain on seat’s edge: Kilmarnock post forthcoming.)
Before the Commanders in Chief were from such highfalutin places as Arkansas, California, or Hawaii, Virginia was the preferred spot to give birth to presidents. In fact, more presidents were born in the Old Dominion than anywhere else. It was a pretty hot streak all the way through to ten if you don’t count those interloper Massachusetts Adamses (John and John Quincy at 2 and 6, respectively); or, of course, that rascal Andrew Jackson (7) of South Carolina. Or New York’s Martin van Buren (8) and his unruly sidewhiskers.
Ok, well that's not the hottest streak. But, as you can see, every time Americans tired of these flirtations with honchos from elsewhere, Virginia was ready to provide more leadership. Check out the illustrious list: George Washington - 1st; Thomas Jefferson – 3rd; James Madison – 4th; James Monroe – 5th; William Henry Harrison – 9th; John Tyler – 10th; Zachary Taylor – 12th; Woodrow Wilson – 28th
I’m not sure what happened between Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson (and since then), but if you’re traveling in Virginia and you’d like to tour a president’s first home, you’ll never have to go too far.
Even if you’re not on a quest to rack up birthplace site visits, it’s worth a stop to roam the grounds of Pope’s Creek Plantation and think a little bit about young George, who was born here in 1732. The farm and buildings are only about 2 miles from Route 3. (You’ll know you’re there when you see the ubiquitous obelisk that seems to accompany every memorial of our first leader. This one’s 1/10th of the size of the D.C. memorial.)
Stroll along the brick pathways and visit the few reconstructed buildings. (I will personally never tire of standing in a low-ceilinged colonial kitchen watching a costumed demonstrator channel a plantation cook.)
A Christmas Day fire in 1779 wiped out the original structures, but in 1936 archaeologists excavated the foundation of George’s first home. The outline is marked in oyster shells---so appropriate to that riverside Virginia geography.
The Potomac River flows along the edge of the farm looking vast and brown. You can fish here or even sunbathe (say the signs). I think George enjoyed the first activity, but not the other: he always looks stately, but pale.
Across the lane you can enter a walled burial ground where three generations of Washingtons are interred, including George’s grandparents. A gift shop (the other ubiquitous accompaniment to memorials of George) and Visitors’ Center offer books, films, and exhibits about the first Father of Our Country.
I'd say that the country is ripe for another Virginia-born leader (after Obama's second term, of course). It's been a long stretch since Woodrow Wilson dealt with Prohibition and World War I. Think of it---you may be reading this from a future presidential birthplace site! How about it, Virginia readers, are any of your daughters or sons up for the job?
You’re Closer Than You Think to Being Seaside
The stubborn chill of March in Washington DC has me daydreaming about taking a break to search for spring. I happen to know about a sugary sand oasis in Florida where, in the same amount of time it takes to put your winter clothes in storage, you could be hopping into your rented convertible and motoring toward the idealized town called Seaside.
"The Truman Show" was filmed in this Florida Panhandle community in 1998 and you may feel you're on a movie set: It's a perfect town, built on the principles of New Urbanism. Every street connects via walkways to the town's center and porches are close to the sidewalks to encourage conversation with passersby. You can shop for records and books on the square and hear a concert on the green. Points of access to the beach are framed by architecturally unique sculptural entryways. They're impressive, but the real thrill is reaching the top of the stairway to find the Gulf Waters impossibly blue and shimmering. The antidote to the DC wintery air that will not relent.
Oh, think of it: squeaky white sand under bare feet, a fruit shake from one of the Airstream trailers that serve as sidewalk cafes along the main strip, an outdoor breakfast complete with a Bloody Mary and beignets, Cruiser bicycle rides past candy-colored cottages.
Southwest Airlines has direct flights from BWI to Panama City. Don’t forget suntan lotion and your book club read. By the time you get home, you’ll be able to put those coats away until next year.
A Chilly Easton Weekend
You may not picture yourself in a shore town until summer. And you may think of the Bay Bridge as a conveyor of idling cars and brake lights. That’s why chilly spring is a great time to visit Maryland’s Eastern Shore. You can zip across the bridge at the speed limit and have the place all to yourself.
My husband’s from the Eastern Shore and so is his whole family “all the way back,” so I’ve spent a lot of time in the clustered towns there. St. Michaels is better known as a tourist destination with its shop-lined streets and docks for your sailboat. But Easton is my favorite. Easton is the less-flashy sister---the one with good bones who doesn’t need to be the center of attention.
Here’s my recipe to a perfect spring overnight:
Pinpoint your weekend by checking out the calendar at the Avalon Theatre for your favorite show. The Avalon is an intimate Art Deco performance space downtown and Roseanne Cash, Marshall Crenshaw, and Randy Newman are a few upcoming acts that caught my middle-aged eye. The breathtaking “Live at the Met in HD” series is also broadcast there. Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" is next for screening.
Take a minute to download and print the self-guided walking tour (click here) that points out interesting architecture and historically significant spots in town.
Book a room at the snug Bishop’s House B&B or try the just-renovated, posh Tidewater Inn. You won’t need your car once you’ve gotten settled in.
On Saturday morning you can prowl for antiques and shop at the cute boutiques on Goldsborough Road and Washington Street. I especially love Lizzy Dee. Even though I am too short for the chic and casual clothing there, earrings always fit and so do purses and printed scarves. Stop into wooden-floored Crackerjacks for a toy-laden nostalgia trip and leave with a yoyo or 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
Make sure to get onion rings and a shake at the soda fountain at Hill’s Drugstore to reinforce the Mayberry feel of the place. (Believe me, there’s a lunch counter; just keep walking straight past the shelves stocked with aspirin bottles and ice packs…)
The attractive Art Academy closes at 3 on Saturdays, so go after lunch and amble through. Afterwards, you can use your handy downloaded walking tour map to become the Easton expert that you’ve always wanted to be or rent bikes for the trails around town. Another great feature of the Eastern Shore: No hills!
Have dinner before the show at the artsy Out of the Fire where you can tuck into a plate of crispy polenta with wild mushroom ragout.
Head home right after Sunday breakfast. Like many small towns, Easton closes up tight to fill up its 38 churches.
Maybe I’ll move to Easton and open a rollicking Sunday coffee shop and feed muffins to all the visitors who find nothing but locked doors elsewhere in town; or maybe a tattoo parlor to get people ready for the beach come summertime…
Looking to Chill
Last winter, I succumbed to peer pressure to downhill ski despite total lack of skills and an intense dislike for speed.
Still emotionally scarred a year later by a harrowing descent on the green level “Salamander” slope at West Virginia's Timberline Resort, I resolved on this year's ski trip to bring a stack of good books and crossword puzzles and to skip the slippery antics.
I would prop pillows by the cozy fireplace and not even once think about riding the swaying ski lift, dangling like an earring over a vast icy mountainside, while people darted like hornets all over the slope below.
No, this year, I would avoid the whole chaotic scene and stay put in our cabin. Or at least that was my plan until I heard about White Grass.
Just 5 miles from our rented house was a laid-back cross-country ski mecca with a homey café and a hippie vibe and it was there, after enjoying a delicious bowl of spinach and barley soup and a turkey panini, that I found my new sport.
White Grass has been outfitting cross-country skiers since 1959 and it has a North Pole vintagey feel: a big pot-bellied wood stove glows in the foyer and handpainted signs adorn the rental area. No molded plastic boots stomped up steps; no bad, expensive hot-dogs and pizza congealed in the lodge; no lift lines (or ambulances parked nearby!)
The difference between the hubbub of the downhill slopes and the whispery winter trails at White Grass was the perfect cure for my ski-related terror. A 20-minute mini-lesson (only $6!) with a cute instructor had me striding and gliding in short order past barns and horses and snow-laden pine branches.
I stuck to the “easy beginner” trails, but there are more challenging ones with sections of hills and twists for the thrill-seeker. For a path to becoming a fearless skier, it's totally chill.
How about you? Would you trade downhill thrills for a country glide through the woods?
Why You Should Go to Staunton
My personal limit for a reasonable weekend excursion is three hours in the car. More than that, to me, and the “travel-time to adventure” ratio feels out of balance.
Here’s a spot that pushes up against the comfortable distance, but is so worth the journey: Staunton, Virginia. (Don’t read that in your head as “Staw-nton”---it’s “St-ANT-on.)
You should go for more than just a creamy shake from Kline's Dairy Bar…
Architecturally, the town is filled with riches. The Civil War did not ravage Staunton and the charming storefronts and homes in and around Main Street are a testament to this. The place is stuffed with Victorian character and faded advertisements from the 20th century painted on vast brick walls. Woodrow Wilson's birthplace is here, too, for you Presidential trivia types. Take a walking tour led by a local expert.
The Blackfriars Playhouse, a replica of Shakespeare’s indoor London theatre, presents the Bard’s plays year-round. Get tickets for a play after your day of strolling and shopping and be sure to arrive early enough for the pre-show's high-energy hijinks.
We had a delicious cheesy pie at Shenandoah Pizza while a folk guitarist entertained and all of Beverley Street was buzzing on Saturday night. It’s truly an artsy, groovster hotspot dotted with coffee shops and actors, yarn stores and poets. (But Sunday morning was a different story. Staunton was closed up tight with pursed lips and no breakfast. Our footsteps echoed along the previous night's vibrant sidewalks. We finally found a cafe open in the Wharf area---called the Wharf, but waterless, this is where the train station is---and sipped a perfect latte. The poets and musicians must have been sleeping or at church---or possibly both at once.)
Stay overnight in a comfortable B&B room at Frederick House or have a elegant hotel experience at The Stonewall Jackson Hotel.
Buy (or blow!) your own glass ornament at Sunspots Studios downtown. Your kids will be entranced, don't you think, by the free glassblowing demonstrations?
And I'm sorry to keep piling on the demands, but do not even think of heading home without visiting the Museum of American Frontier Culture where settlers' homes and farm buildings are tended to by staff in period clothing who share the stories of America's earliest immigrants. Yes, there are sheep to pet!
Next time I go, I have my heart set on taking Amtrak. Only $41 from Union Station to Staunton (a four-hour journey by rail). You can easily walk from the station to the town and to most of the attractions. I love the idea of reading and gazing out the window on the lovely ride south and west into the Shenandoah Valley. Then the traveling becomes the adventure.
Space Fix
After a visit from out west, my parents had a homeward bound flight to catch at Dulles---a perfect chance to check out the Udvar-Hazy Center, the National Air and Space Museum’s enormous facility to show off all the cool planes and spaceships that don’t fit in their Mall site. While I am impressed by the concept of flight and amazed, in a general way, by advances in aerospace technology, the idea of an excursion to see planes and more planes made me feel a snooze coming on. But I did it for Dad, a retired United Airlines dispatcher with a fondness for flying machines.
We paid $15 to park, a fee that rankled until I read that it was meant to deter airport users. (Dulles is only four miles away. There is a free shuttle between the airport and the museum---a great layover idea, I think.) Entrance to the Center is free. Once we got inside, the parking fee annoyance evaporated.
Three levels of walkways circle the perimeter of immense hangars and planes are everywhere: Perky, yellow circus “Jennys” dangle from rafters like toys, positively dwarfed by giant spy planes, chalky gray and ominous.
Aircraft of all conceivable shapes and colors fill the space, suspended from the 10-story high trusses. Even for someone not so interested in the history of flight and the contributions rising from military needs and subsequent space exploration, the sight of thousands of flyers all massed in these giant rooms was awe-inspiring.
The Enola Gay is there.
So is the Space Shuttle Enterprise in a room hung with satellites, like holiday decorations.
The super-sonic Concorde rests in ironic and silent stillness, sleek and long on the hangar floor, a misfit amongst tiny hovering biplanes.
In glass cases, you can ogle an assembly of Charles Lindbergh collectibles or china and furniture festooned with designs representing another flight craze: hot air balloons. A teacup, salvaged from the Hindenburg (see video here), rests next to its saucer---a reminder of the failures amidst all the soaring successes.
You’ll see Amelia Earhart’s pilot goggles and her stylish flight jacket, but you won’t find her Lockheed Electra: it’s been missing since 1937.
You can take a free tour and hear tantalizing tidbits like this that I overheard as we lingered for a moment at the Blackbird SR-71A:
“…if a bullet was shot alongside this plane, the plane would outpace it.”
In fact, this stealth bomber has flown from NY to LA in 64 minutes. That’s 2,094 miles per hour. Look, it’s crazy fast---nothing flew faster. And it’s parked just inside of the front doors of the Udvar-Hazy Center. Next time your dad’s in town, go see it.