Tag: Day Trip

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Living

Rail fun: Through the countryside and under the mountain on the passenger train

From Charlottesville to Staunton, Amtrak’s Cardinal provides a beautiful one-hour ride through the countryside. Photo: Ben Schumin

Three days a week, an Amtrak train called the Cardinal rolls through Charlottesville on its way from New York to Chicago. Unless you’re planning a long trip to a city along the route (Indianapolis, anyone? Cincinnati?), you may not look twice at the train. But it’s more than a means of transport. For a family, the train can be an outing in itself.

I have a longstanding romance with trains, from the battered freight cars I saw snaking along the Pittsburgh rivers of my childhood, to the coaches I rode through Switzerland and Greece as a college student, to the BART light-rail cars that carried me to work in San Francisco. I love them all, and I consider a train journey to be a special window in time, when one’s only job is to gaze at the fascinating world crawling past.

Wanting to give my two girls a taste of that magic, I had eyed the Cardinal for a while. They’re still rather young, so I didn’t feel they were ready for a more ambitious trip, for instance, to Washington, D.C., (which would entail staying overnight, in any case). But I noticed that we could ride from Charlottesville to Staunton in the mid-afternoon, giving us about one hour on the train. All we’d need would be a driver willing to pick us up on the other side of the mountain.

I told my kids I had a surprise for them and didn’t reveal a thing until we pulled into the parking lot at the Amtrak station on West Main Street. It was a Friday afternoon. When they realized what was happening, they bounced around joyfully, just as I’d hoped they would. We waited on the platform in a state of high anticipation, gazing east down the tracks, and when the Amtrak engine finally slipped into view, the girls’ eyes grew wide. The three of us squeezed into two seats, and soon the train lurched into motion and the city started rolling past us.

One of my favorite things about train travel is that it can reveal a new side of places you thought you knew well. We drive between Charlottesville and Crozet all the time, but to see that part of Albemarle from the tracks offered a totally different perspective. It was exciting to shoot through downtown Crozet at high speed. I felt as if we were strangers in these parts again, wending our way past the unknown fields of Greenwood and beginning the long climb up the Blue Ridge. And once the train dove into the tunnel that carries it under Rockfish Gap, we entered a new realm. I felt a bit disoriented, and the girls fell silent, as we descended toward Waynesboro.

Though I’d brought along things to do—books, sketchbooks, snacks—we really didn’t need them. The girls were enchanted to be able to ride without seat belts, to feel the motion of the cars, to hear about how far these tracks could take us if we were to keep on riding. My older daughter pulled out a little notebook and wrote me a note: “Dear Mom, Thank you for this.”

When we pulled into the Staunton station, we were by no means tired of the train. But we had a new adventure before us—to explore Staunton, sans car. A block from the train station, we caught the trolley and rode it to Gypsy Hill Park, Staunton’s large (big enough to have its own golf course) and pleasantly old-fashioned greenspace.

Named for the nomadic people who frequented it in the 1800s, Gypsy Hill is highly programmed. It reminded me a little of New York City’s Central Park, with amusements from horseshoes to skate ramps and ball fields around every turn. After sprawling under a beautiful tree to nosh some snacks, the girls and I were drawn first to the large pond, where you can buy pellets to toss to the ducks and swans. Later we drifted toward the big playgrounds at the park’s other end, passing along the way another train, the Gypsy Express—this one a child-size railroad that tootles around the park on weekends.

After a while, my husband heroically appeared to drive us back to Charlottesville in an ordinary car. It was the end of a legendary day, one we’ll talk about for a long time to come.

If you go

Amtrak’s Cardinal route runs between New York and Chicago and passes through Charlottesville, heading west, on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1:52pm. Tickets to Staunton cost $12 for adults, and for each adult, one child gets a half-price fare (Amtrak.com). Gypsy Hill Park is located at the intersection of Churchville and Thornrose avenues.

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Living

Star-struck: For a planetarium visit and so much more, Harrisonburg is out of this world

Stars shine during the day at JMU’s planetarium. Photo: JMU Marketing & Communications

Some day trips have a singular purpose (i.e., “We’re going to the zoo!”), while others consist of a medley of experiences in the same general location. My family’s recent Saturday in Harrisonburg was one of the gumbo type. My husband and I and our girls, ages 5 and 8, saw a planetarium show, then visited a couple other universes while we were in town.

We had previously been to The John C. Wells Planetarium at James Madison University on organized field trips, but after I found out that families can visit for free most Saturdays, we packed up and headed west. On its dome-shaped screen, the university shows astronomically themed films—such as, A Teenager’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Did an Asteroid Really Kill the Dinosaurs?—followed by student-led star talks.

Inside a nondescript concrete classroom building, we entered the planetarium and settled into our stadium-style seats. The lights went down and a 20-minute film began—a cartoon version of the ancient Greek story of Perseus and Andromeda, the couple immortalized as constellations. My children were well entertained, craning their necks to follow the story unfolding overhead.

After the film ended, a cool-looking device—like a short, fat robot bristling with lenses and lights—emerged from the middle of the floor. Turns out it’s a projector that creates an image on the dome of what we’d see in the night sky from this very spot. The projector operators can manipulate the starry vision—spin it around, whoosh it forward or backward in time, or overlay the outlines of constellations, for example.

The two students leading the post-film talk were full of interesting facts. Did you know the Big Dipper isn’t really a constellation? It’s an asterism—a smaller collection of stars. It was fun to observe college students—closer to my kids’ age than my own—commanding the room and showing off their knowledge (and also their bad jokes, such as, calling Orion’s belt a “waist of space.”)

After the movie, star show, and talk—all of which filled an hour—we needed a bite, and a short drive delivered us to Taj of India, in downtown Harrisonburg. To a soundtrack of Indian pop music, we gorged on the lunch buffet, a feast replete with hot fresh naan, savory kormas and dahls, fiery tandoori dishes, and sweet rice pudding. The tab came to $35, a great deal for four people.

Did I mention this was a day of odd juxtapositions? Uh-huh. Next stop was a dairy barn.

At Mt. Crawford Creamery, 15 minutes south of Harrisonburg, we tromped through the muddy barnyard, then slipped through a small door into the milking parlor. Ten cows were slotted into two narrow lanes, like cars lined up in a parking lot. Standing on a lowered floor, which put them at roughly eye level with the cows’ udders, were farmer Kenneth Will and two helpers.

They welcomed us in but didn’t miss a beat in their work: cleaning the udders carefully before hooking up the milking machines, keeping an eye on the milk as it rushed through tubing and sprayed into large glass tanks in the center of the room, and then driving one group of cows out and the next group in.

The farm milks 60 to 80 cows in this parlor, twice a day, and it was fascinating to witness. How often do you get to take a really close look at a cow’s muddy hooves, jutting hipbones, and big wet muzzle? The animals gazed back at us with large, soft eyes, while a super-mellow farm dog licked up stray drops of milk from the concrete floor. I was glad for my girls to absorb this experience—the earthy smells of the room and the truth they pointed to, that milk and all the rest of our food comes from real plants and animals.

After we left, we joked about what else we could add to the day to round out the agenda. Go to the circus? Tour the White House? Maybe another time. We’d traveled far enough for one day, right there in Harrisonburg.

If you go

The John C. Wells Planetarium at JMU offers free public film showings on Saturdays at 11am, 1pm, 2:15pm, and 3:30pm. It’s located in Miller Hall on East Grace Street, in Harrisonburg. See jmu.edu/planetarium for details.

Taj of India, at 34 S. Main St., serves a lunch buffet  from 11am-2:30pm daily. Call (540) 615-5888.

Mt. Crawford Creamery, at 795 Old Bridgewater Rd. in Mount Crawford,
is open to visitors M-F 10am-6pm and Saturday 9am-5pm. You can observe cows being fed around 3pm and milked a half hour later. There’s also a shop on-site where you can buy the dairy’s milk products, plus
an ice cream parlor. See mtcrawford creamery.com

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Living

Mummy outing: A day with kids at the VMFA (and other places)

Including kids in the process of navigating museums leads to exciting discoveries like 4,050-year-old Tjeby, Count and Sealbearer of the King of Lower Egypt, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Photo courtesy of VMFA

It’s worth it to drive to Richmond on a rainy day. It might actually be the best time to make the trip—instead of moping around home or doing errands, you defy the weather and make a bold strike for the capital city. After all, there’s lots to do there. Like, mummy-viewing—which was enough to get me and my kids, ages 5 and 8, on the road to Richmond one recent drizzly day.

Yes, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has a mummy on display. Does a mummy qualify as fine art? No matter. We had other business to attend to before we approached the ancient one.

First on the agenda was the factory store of Red Rocker Candy in the town of Troy—a handy stop that breaks up the Richmond drive. Red Rocker is not only a woman-owned local business, it’s a tourist attraction with a production facility open to visitors, and a shop offering Red Rocker treats you can’t get anywhere else.

Standing at a large window in the shop, we watched as employees weighed out portions of Red Rocker’s signature pretzel mix, scooping from a big mound on a stainless-steel table, then sealing and labeling the containers. In a different area, a worker was spreading chocolate over a baking sheet and sprinkling copious amounts of nonpareils over it—then another sheet, then another. Several employees welcomed us warmly with samples and friendly chatting, and then we nibbled even more delights from jars in the shop.

On that big Mother Report Card in the sky, I wasn’t exactly earning an A in the feed-them-healthy-food column, but they sure were happy.

Continuing on, we arrived in Richmond hungry for lunch, sugary calories notwithstanding, so I steered toward Carytown. Our recent obsession with Greek mythology prompted me to seek out Greek food, which might not make a lot of rational sense, but jived perfectly with the logic of children. They were delighted to sit down to lunch at Greek On Cary, and though the meal was served by an ordinary mortal rather than an Olympian god, it proved plenty exciting—a sizable octopus tentacle served over grilled veggies (delicious), fried calamari mixed with piquant peppers, and a hunk of kefalograviera cheese, which our waitress set aflame before our astonished eyes. And: good old bread.

We ran through the rain back to our car and made the short drive to the VMFA. I love this museum for so many reasons, starting with its convenience and accessibility for families—admission is free, the coat check is free, and though the garage isn’t free, you can usually find street parking (free).

And the size is just right—small enough to be navigable, big enough to harbor many surprises. We headed first for the Egyptian artifacts, housed mainly in one room. The mummy waits in a darkened corner as visitors make their way past canopic jars, casts of relief carvings from ancient temples, and elaborate sarcophagi.

As you near the mummy, lights automatically illuminate its coffin. Tjeby, Count and Sealbearer of the King of Lower Egypt, died around 4,050 years ago. He wasn’t given quite the King Tut treatment—rather, he lies on his side in a narrow wooden box decorated with a single line of hieroglyphs and a pair of eyes meant to allow Tjeby to see out into the world. A tilted mirror affords a view down onto his linen-wrapped body. The girls were suitably impressed.

In nearby rooms, we were excited to see some of the Greek myths and epics we’ve been learning about represented on urns and other antiquities. There was Athena, springing from the skull of Zeus! There was the Trojan War!

Both girls were interested in a large mosaic depicting the four seasons, and crowns made of gold myrtle leaves, but my younger daughter started to drag a little as her sister and I checked out a statue of the evil Roman emperor Caligula. “Art museums are boring,” she said—a statement which, though it defied the enjoyment she’d shown just minutes earlier, did speak a certain truth. Art museums are not really made for kids; a lot of the artworks are just plain too high off the ground, for one thing, and the sheer volume of the collection means that a family shouldn’t even try to see it all in one visit.

So how to keep things rolling? I settled on this approach: 1. Give everybody a turn to decide what to look at next (including the grownup; I chose African masks). 2. Intersperse gallery time with stops in the gift shop and café. 3. Freely give piggyback rides.

In short, museum-with-kids is not the same experience as museum-with-adults. Hoofing my 5-year-old through a hall of tapestries, I felt a long way from those past days when I’d wander for hours, uninterrupted, through marble galleries, having one aesthetic revelation after another. But this was another kind of wonderful.

If you go

The Red Rocker Candy factory store is located at 170 Industrial Way in Troy. It’s open Tuesday-Sunday.

Greek On Cary is at 3107 W. Cary St. in Richmond and serves lunch and dinner daily. See .

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 200 N. Boulevard, is open every day of the year and offers free general admission. The museum also offers Family Days and other kid-friendly activities.

For more on Richmond museums to visit with kids, see this previous Day Trip column.

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Living

Chip chip hooray: Exploring the Valley’s light, crispy attractions

At the Route 11 Potato Chips factory near Harrisonburg, visitors can watch as raw, unpeeled spuds are transformed into freshly bagged chips. Photo courtesy Route 11 Potato Chips

Believe it or not, there are some things Charlottesville still doesn’t have, which is a great reason to get out of town now and then. Another great reason is that many towns within striking distance of Charlottesville are attractive and thriving. When a friend and I, with our combined five kids, pulled into Harrisonburg on a recent afternoon, we both appreciated having a city within easy reach that clearly offers its own distinct world to explore.

Then again, we knew exactly where we were headed. That would be Ruby’s Arcade, which I discovered with my two girls on a rainy day about a year ago. Tucked into downtown Harrisonburg, it’s a combination restaurant and game room that, at least on weekday afternoons, is deliciously family-friendly. (I suspect that, with its full bar and happy hour specials, it caters to a different crowd in the evening.)

But what a great concept! In we walked and within five minutes, we were embarking on a group game of duckpin bowling, played on an antique apparatus salvaged from an unknown 1950s establishment somewhere in America. The kids worked on refining their granny-stance technique—and, I must say, improved with every frame—while my friend and I pondered Ruby’s large menu.

Soon, the small table at the head of our lane was somehow managing to hold two pizzas, mac ’n’ cheese, chips, fries, and cups and plates for seven people. We munched and bowled against a backdrop of nicely muraled walls. Between turns, the kids explored the variety of games that fill the sprawling space beneath the arcade’s low ceiling.

Air hockey proved popular. There are pool tables, plus darts, shuffleboard, foosball, a small selection of video games, and a big selection of board games. Last but not least is ping pong, in which my friend and I soon became so happily engaged that the kids had to drag us out of the arcade. The best part: All the games were free. Ruby’s doesn’t make this super clear on its website, but on a mellow weekday, you pay only for food.

We piled back in the van. Next stop: the Route 11 Potato Chips factory, a few miles up Interstate 81. We hadn’t been here before and weren’t prepared for the enticing smell that hit our noses as soon as we stepped out of the car. Inside the large tasting room, we learned that this particular day at the factory was devoted to producing sweet potato chips. Mmmm.

You can’t actually enter the production area, but you can get a darn good look at how the chips are made by gazing through large interior windows. An employee gave us a brief intro to what we were seeing and spouted off a few impressive figures, including the 14,000 pounds of potatoes that the factory can process in a day.

A fraction of those were, as we watched, undergoing a rapid transformation from peeled raw spuds to freshly bagged chips, all packaged up in boxes. Sliced potatoes poured off the end of a conveyor belt into a steamy vat of hot oil where a snakelike stirring rod trundled back and forth. Inspectors waved at the kids through the window as they plucked out less-than-perfect chips, to be fed, we were told, to local cows.

Upstairs, a fascinating machine portions out the chips just before they plunge through a tube (like something out of a Roald Dahl story), into an even more fascinating machine that folded, filled, and sealed the bags. Personally, I could have watched this all day—there was something so alluringly behind-the-scenes about seeing, for the first time in my life, how a chip bag is engineered.

The kids were impressed, too, but they didn’t forget to make frequent visits to the sample table offering a rainbow of flavors. We bought everybody a small bag of their choice, plus a big clear plastic bag of uber-fresh sweet potato chips.

On the way out, my friend picked up a brochure for nearby Shenandoah Caverns and read me a description of one of the caverns’ ancillary attractions: American Celebration, a museum of parade floats. We agreed that it sounded like fun, and then five minutes later we stumbled across that very museum on our way back to the highway.

Sadly, the museum’s closed for the season, but they’re hosting a haunted house through Halloween. And a friendly employee invited us to check out the Yellow Barn event venue across the road, which houses some antique farm equipment and a working beehive. We opted to sprawl on the manicured lawn instead, gazing at a replica of the Statue of Liberty, while the kids played sardines. Sometimes, it’s those unscheduled, unofficial moments that turn out to be the best parts of a trip. And now we have a few reasons to go back.

If you go:

Ruby’s Arcade is located at 100B 165 S. Main Street in Harrisonburg. Call (540)615-5351 for hours and details on pricing (games are not always free).

The Route 11 Potato Chips factory is located in Mt. Jackson and is open to the public Monday-Saturday 9am-5pm. If you want to catch the frying in action, call ahead: (540) 477-9664.

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Living

Into the cavern: At Luray, there are so many reasons to stay

The natural wonder of Luray Caverns offers a full day of activities including a garden maze, a ropes course, a collection of museums, and a stunning walk through underground formations. Photo courtesy of Luray Caverns

Tourist trap: It’s such an ugly term. Of course there’s reason to beware of over-hyped destinations. But—especially with kids in tow—there’s also a certain enjoyment in surrendering, now and then, to the spectacle. I don’t know of anyplace in Virginia where that’s a truer statement than at Luray Caverns. The Caverns, as our guide on a recent tour explained, were discovered by three locals who deliberately set out to hunt for a cavern they could develop as a tourist attraction. That was back in 1878, and given that those discoverers didn’t manage to wrest a profit from their find, they’d probably be even more astonished to see what Luray looks like now.

My two girls and I made the drive up Route 340 to Luray with clear eyes. We knew this was not going to be a brush with an unspoiled wonder; the billboards alone (“Mother Nature’s Finest Interior Decorating”) make that obvious. Still, one look at the complex sprawling around the caverns parking lot told me that the good folks at Luray were going to do their best to keep our attention—and keep me spending cash—all the livelong day. Luray includes a garden maze, a ropes course, a collection of museums, and even an on-site gas station. Oh yeah, and a cavern. We rolled with it. After we bought our tickets—it felt a little like booking air travel—the girls, ages 5 and 8, asked to start in the garden maze.

I’d somehow made it this far in life without entering a maze of any kind, and assumed we’d soon become hopelessly lost, thirsty, and panicked. It didn’t happen, though: As I should have realized, the owners of tourist attractions don’t actually want the tourists to have a terrifying time. They’d sprinkled enough clues throughout the tall passageways to ensure that we could make it out—and they sprinkled us too, with cooling mist. We found our way to all four “goals” and then to the exit with only minor, enjoyable confusion.

On to the ropes course. Employees buckled us into harnesses and showed us how to maneuver them through a system of overhead rails as we tiptoed along narrow beams, rungs, and ropes about a gazillion feet in the air. Well, maybe not that high, but high enough to make me seriously nervous on my first couple of passes, as I gripped the sweaty hand of my wobbly 5-year-old. I admit it was a pretty cool moment when we both grew comfortable enough to let go of each other and she took off on her own. Her older sister, meanwhile, gallivanted fearlessly all over the course. We all felt elated when we finally descended.

After a picnic on the lawn, we got in line for a cavern tour. On a day of jarring juxtapositions, none is stranger than this: You’re inside a building, and then you go down some concrete steps and you’re standing in a cavern. The ceiling soars overhead, dripping with stalactites, and an enormous calcite formation, named for George Washington, stands on the floor before you.

Now, let me say that the tour itself at Luray, a mile and a quarter long, is not super-inspired. Our baby-faced, bored-sounding guide recited his script and little else. And I’m glad I wasn’t expecting a geology lesson for my kids, because they didn’t get one. Have I mentioned that Luray Caverns is geared toward tourists? We trudged along brick and concrete paths, obeyed the command not to touch the cave formations, and absorbed a steady stream of quasi-historical lore, all in a pack of 35 or so people.

But it’s hard to ruin a place like this. Luray is a large and astonishing feature of the earth, festooned with every kind of underground formation you could hope to see: stalactites, stalagmites, delicate drapery formations, still-as-glass pools, columns, and flowstone. Even if you ignore the official information, this is the kind of place that makes an impression: It’s a feast for the eyes and a different visual language than we’re used to above ground. The absorption and wonder of kids in such a setting is a good model for the rest of us.

It’s a feast for the eyes and a different visual language than we’re used to above ground.

After exiting the cavern, as you might guess, we were a bit spent. But still there was more—so much more to see! We made a weary attempt to appreciate the Toy Town Junction Museum, home of model trains and historical toys, skipped the Car and Carriage Caravan Museum, and briefly checked out the Luray Valley Museum, which is all about Shenandoah Valley history. All of it was worthwhile enough, but there’s only so much stimulation a family can take in one day.

We’d spent the day as lemmings, true, and the cynical grownup in me sneered a little at the manufactured hokiness of it all. But my kids saw no reason to turn up their noses. They were two very happy tourists.

If You Go

Luray Caverns is open daily 9am-6pm through October; winter hours are 9am-4pm. Tickets for the cavern and museums are $28 for adults and $15 for kids 6-12. The garden maze costs $9 for adults and $7 for kids 6-12. The ropes course is $11 if you’re 48 inches tall or more, $7 if you’re not. For more information, go to luraycaverns.com.

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Living

Day trip: The Frontier Culture Museum brings history home

An American farmhouse in the 1740s was often a one- or two-room log cabin built by family members. Husband-and-wife teams used crosscut saws to clear the forest where they intended to live and grow crops. Courtesy Frontier Culture Museum

Just like America, the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton is big, complicated and beautiful.

It’s one of my favorite places to take my two girls—a museum where almost anything can be touched and very little is written down. Creative writing professors often exhort students to “show, don’t tell,” and this museum nails that concept, presenting history as a living, 3-D phenomenon.

If you’ve never been, here’s a summary: The FCM illustrates the lifeways of the many cultures, including European, African and Native American groups, that collectively formed the melting pot of the Shenandoah Valley, plus early American life as it evolved over time. It does all this through recreated farms and villages—dwellings, livestock, gardens, costumed interpreters—many of which were actually moved from their original locations.

It’s really a staggering concept, when you stop to consider it. Of course, kids may not be quite ready to wrap their minds around all the complexities of the last four centuries, but this is a place that they can certainly enjoy—and learn from. I’ve found myself referring back to the FCM in conversation with my daughters, just as we often do with another touchstone, the Little House books.

To my way of thinking, there is too much here to see in one day. Spread over the museum grounds are English, Irish and German farms, a West African farm, a Native American village and three separate American farms of different eras, plus a church and a schoolhouse. Each deserves much more than a glance, so I’ve taken my kids multiple times and tried to concentrate on different sections each time.

One favorite is the 1700s West African farm. This is a new addition since I first came to the FCM in the early 2000s, and it does a lot to deepen the story the museum tells. I always have to pause to appreciate a pair of beautifully carved wooden doors at the compound entrance; they remind me of how much I don’t know about life and culture in historical Africa.

Meanwhile, my kids run ahead to duck inside one of the dwellings, built of earthen walls and thatched roofs. One of the things that becomes a commonality across many parts of the museum is that people have built their houses out of whatever their environment provided—bark, mud, tree limbs or stone.

We all love being able to pick up and touch things: brooms, pots and skins that serve as “mattresses” for sleeping. And I’m glad when my kids get an inkling of how few possessions most people through history have owned, a stark contrast to our own stuff-laden culture.

Since animals have been a crucial part of the human story too, it’s more than fitting that the FCM keeps many kinds of livestock to round out the picture of each farm it recreates. And, of course, animal encounters are just plain fun. My daughters were delighted once to be approached by two small, very polite goats on the path from West Africa to England. I assume they were actually supposed to be behind a fence somewhere, but their escape was a happy accident for us.

At the three European farms, the level of detail is rich (partly owing to the fact that the buildings really are old, not just built to look that way). The excellent interpreters have much to share about the work they are doing. We’ve chatted with them about spinning and dyeing yarn, working a forge, cooking on an open hearth and much more. Two interpreters at the Native American village—another newish addition to the museum—once mesmerized me and my kids as they painstakingly scraped a deer hide with stones.

When you arrive, by foot or by golf cart, at the American section of the museum, you’re struck by the evolution of American life over time. The cabin that would have been typical in the 1700s, when the valley was just being settled by Europeans, is unbelievably crude compared with the smart, prosperous farm of the 1850s.

I loved learning that, on the frontier, husband-and-wife teams often used crosscut saws to clear the forest where they intended to live and grow crops. And I loved even more seeing my girls try out that very saw.

Yet, of course, the skills they’ll need in their own era are very different. Just beyond the trees, I-81 thunders past (one interpreter jokingly called it “the great trade route”). It’s a reminder of where all this history has led, and the fact that my daughters will be helping to write a new chapter we can’t yet imagine.

If you go

The Frontier Culture Museum is located in Staunton, just off I-81. Hours through this fall are 9am-5pm daily, and ticket prices are $12 adults, $11 students and $7 kids ages 6-12. (Younger children get in free.) Walking paths connect all exhibits, and golf carts circulate to offer rides to the weary. See frontiermuseum.org.

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Living

Day trip: Adventuring with kids in our nation’s capital

The layout of the National Zoo (admission is free!) with a main walkway and themed side loops like the Asia Trail allows visitors to hit all the high points  without consulting a map. Photos courtesy Smithsonian’s National Zoo

Before I tell you all about taking your kids on a day trip to Washington, D.C.—one of the best destinations there is—I’ll admit right upfront that such a trip is exhausting. But here’s my secret for making it exhilarating too: Leave your car outside the city and ride the Metro in. It’ll break up the trip, hugely simplify parking and let the kids escape their car seats. In other words, it makes travel time part of the adventure.

Obviously, an early start is recommended. I do not pretend to fully grok the scope of D.C. rush hour, but I can say this: Leave home early enough to arrive at Franconia-Springfield Metro Station (off I-95, south of the city) around 10:30am, and you should miss the traffic. Or just go on a weekend.

Why Franconia? Well, the drive there—through Gordonsville and Orange—is ultra-scenic, and the parking garage is enormous and cheap ($9 for the day). True, the last 40 miles on I-95 feel tedious; perhaps a surprise audiobook, or just some cookies, would help everybody’s attitude.

On my last trip with my two daughters, as usual, the Metro ride was half the attraction. My country girls, ages 5 and 7, get excited just to ride escalators to the train platform, and the older one enjoyed following the signage in Metro stations and being responsible for her own Metro card. We saw a plane taking off from Reagan National and spotted Canada geese on the Potomac.

While planning the day, we’d decided to skip the multitude of destinations on the National Mall and check out the National Zoo. But we had to stop off first at our favorite place in Chinatown, New Big Wong—a no-frills Chinese joint with tanks of eels and lobsters in the back. My girls love those, and I love that we can all lunch for under 20 bucks.

Another short train ride, and we found ourselves walking to the zoo entrance. I was reminded that for kids, the journey is everything. They got interested in Russian nesting dolls in a store window, the view of Rock Creek Park from the Taft Bridge, the fountain outside the Art-Deco Kennedy-Warren apartment building. …In short, we weren’t in a rush and that was all to the good.

Finally, we walked through the gates. As part of the Smithsonian, the zoo is free and you can stroll right in (as, it seems, many local residents often do). The zoo is laid out along one main walkway, with themed side loops like Asia Trail and America Trail, and there’s no need to consult much with a map; if you go with the flow, you’ll hit all the high points. On the way in we looked at an extensive schedule of daily programs—zookeeper chats and feeding demos and the like—but decided just to keep it simple and look at animals.

At first, that seemed difficult; the sloth bear, clouded leopard and small-clawed otter all proved elusive and the dreaded word “boring” arose once or twice. But then we found the panda exhibit and were entranced to see a panda climbing trees and then rolling over on its back, drawing awwws from a large crowd of humans. Immediately afterward, we spotted elephants, and the zoo began to feel more than worthwhile.

We ended up staying nearly five hours. Highlights included the indoor portion of the elephant exhibit (where workers tossed treats to animals standing not 15 feet away from us), a friendly spoonbill bird in the Amazonia exhibit, underwater views of swimming sea lions and—let’s not forget—a short break for Dippin’ Dots, a snack the girls found both tasty and hilarious.

Every time I suspected we were coming down with zoo fatigue, something rescued us. The zoo path would deliver us to a carousel, or we’d discover an exhibit about elephant dung, and the kids would be revived. Honestly, you’d think the place had been designed for families.

After eating a picnic dinner I’d been hoofing all day in my backpack, it was time to make our exit. There was still more to see (we never even set foot in the Reptile House!), but at some point a parent has to get out in front of the looming energy crash—her kids’ and her own. The reptiles will be there another day.

And so, undoubtedly, will the megachain coffeeshop right across the street from the zoo exit. I slipped in there for a cuppa just before closing, and that’s how we all made it safely home that night.

If You Go

• The Metro rides in this trip cost a total of $11.95 for each rider age 5 and up. Fares vary with time of day. See wmata.com.

• The National Zoo is accessed by the Cleveland Park and Woodley Park-Zoo Metro stops. It’s open daily, 8am to 7pm in summer. Happily, you can bring in your own food and drinks. See national zoo.si.edu.

• New Big Wong is at 610 H St. NW, just a few steps from the Friendship Arch (aka the Chinatown Gate). (202) 628-0491.