Cherry Hill is a very nice RV Park just on the Washington DC Beltway in College Park MD. There are not many choices at all near DC for parking an RV and seeing the city. This is perhaps the best and in fact the only one I/we’ve tried. It has all the amenities, pool, café, rec hall, and a store with an RV supply section. They even have a tourism director on site who can help with all those little tourism things. On our first day we went to the orientation and picked out a few things to do. Not that it’s hard. If you can’t find something to do in Washington something is very wrong. And a whole lot of it is free. Transportation is easy and relatively inexpensive if you don’t mind public transportation, that being the Metro, and some walking. We had to take a bus to the nearest Metro Rail station and then from there you can virtually get about anywhere in the metro area including all the tourist attractions.
We did all kinds of stuff and quite frankly the first couple of days kind of wore us out. We went to the National Zoo (free), and the National Mall and all it’s museums including, Air and Space, Modern Art (yuk), Natural History, American History (unfortunately closed), Art (plain old), the Botanical Garden etc, etc. all free. Then we rested at the pool a little and started again. We chose to take the Washington-By-Night bus tour and it was well worth the price. It’s mostly a driving tour with four or five stops at monuments including the Lincoln, Jefferson, and FDR Memorials. It’s not quite as easy as it used to be to get in the Capitol so we contacted Ron Wyden, one of our Senators for a tour and did that one day. An aid is assigned to conduct tours on a regular basis. We were fortunate to see the House Republicans in their protest of Speaker of the House Nancy Polosi’s decision to not bring an energy bill to the floor for a vote. Kat and I would have stayed longer to watch that but we only had a short time. Still it was great to see. Go House Republicans! The rest of the tour was good too but the highlight for me was to see Polosi getting slammed a little, though not nearly enough. We went to the Supreme Court building and Union Station and had an opportunity to by a hot dog and coke for $9, that would have been $9 for each of us, but we passed. We did get some good frozen desserts from a stand for only $3 each. I didn’t say it was all cheap. We had lunch at the Dept. of Agriculture cafeteria and that was neat. I wondered if that was where my grandma used to eat when she worked in DC way back in the 50’s? Who knows?
We did experience one of the sadder moments of our RV travels while at Cherry Hill. Our neighbors from California, Henry and Mildred Hoyt took the DC-By Night tour a few days before we did and Millie, who I really never had the opportunity to meet, though Kat did briefly, took suddenly ill and passed away at the FDR Memorial. I had talked to Hank a little before this happened and he was real nice old guy, they were in their 80’s. During the tour Millie complained of feeling a little poorly and went to the restroom. They found her passed out in the restroom just a few minutes later. She had had a heart attack went into a comma and could not be revived. We didn’t know all this immediately but when they didn’t show up at the RV for a couple of days Kat inquired at the office and found out what had happened. When Hank did show up he was obviously devastated. I talked to him at length and Kat gave him some hugs and attention. Two of his children came back to help him make arrangements and get home. He was going to go stay with his daughter and ‘son’ in law who had some interesting work for him to do. It had something to do with cleaning up fossils and tree burls, anyway, Hank was looking forward to it. Like I said, Hank and I talked quite a while over the course of the two or three days before he left. I’d like to think that if nothing else I provided come comfort in listening and understanding. He was a nice old guy! We’ve sent him a couple of cards and hope he is well.
We did all kinds of stuff and quite frankly the first couple of days kind of wore us out. We went to the National Zoo (free), and the National Mall and all it’s museums including, Air and Space, Modern Art (yuk), Natural History, American History (unfortunately closed), Art (plain old), the Botanical Garden etc, etc. all free. Then we rested at the pool a little and started again. We chose to take the Washington-By-Night bus tour and it was well worth the price. It’s mostly a driving tour with four or five stops at monuments including the Lincoln, Jefferson, and FDR Memorials. It’s not quite as easy as it used to be to get in the Capitol so we contacted Ron Wyden, one of our Senators for a tour and did that one day. An aid is assigned to conduct tours on a regular basis. We were fortunate to see the House Republicans in their protest of Speaker of the House Nancy Polosi’s decision to not bring an energy bill to the floor for a vote. Kat and I would have stayed longer to watch that but we only had a short time. Still it was great to see. Go House Republicans! The rest of the tour was good too but the highlight for me was to see Polosi getting slammed a little, though not nearly enough. We went to the Supreme Court building and Union Station and had an opportunity to by a hot dog and coke for $9, that would have been $9 for each of us, but we passed. We did get some good frozen desserts from a stand for only $3 each. I didn’t say it was all cheap. We had lunch at the Dept. of Agriculture cafeteria and that was neat. I wondered if that was where my grandma used to eat when she worked in DC way back in the 50’s? Who knows?
We did experience one of the sadder moments of our RV travels while at Cherry Hill. Our neighbors from California, Henry and Mildred Hoyt took the DC-By Night tour a few days before we did and Millie, who I really never had the opportunity to meet, though Kat did briefly, took suddenly ill and passed away at the FDR Memorial. I had talked to Hank a little before this happened and he was real nice old guy, they were in their 80’s. During the tour Millie complained of feeling a little poorly and went to the restroom. They found her passed out in the restroom just a few minutes later. She had had a heart attack went into a comma and could not be revived. We didn’t know all this immediately but when they didn’t show up at the RV for a couple of days Kat inquired at the office and found out what had happened. When Hank did show up he was obviously devastated. I talked to him at length and Kat gave him some hugs and attention. Two of his children came back to help him make arrangements and get home. He was going to go stay with his daughter and ‘son’ in law who had some interesting work for him to do. It had something to do with cleaning up fossils and tree burls, anyway, Hank was looking forward to it. Like I said, Hank and I talked quite a while over the course of the two or three days before he left. I’d like to think that if nothing else I provided come comfort in listening and understanding. He was a nice old guy! We’ve sent him a couple of cards and hope he is well.
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