One thing that’s interesting about eastern state campgrounds that is different from most western state campgrounds is that they are often within just a few miles of urban areas, but because of the density of the hardwood trees in these areas, they don’t feel urban. They feel like you’re deep in the woods and away from the city’s hustle and bustle.
Greenbelt Campground is north of Washington DC in Maryland, but is within 3 miles of a DC-metro stop that will easily get you to the city center. For more DC information (click here for post).
News stations here kept mentioning “Delmarva” which wasn’t immediately obvious to us as Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. We would soon discover over the next several days in these tight packed states that we were crossing state lines frequently!
The other thing Greenbelt Campground has going for it is it’s proximity to 2 Maryland flight centers – the Goddard Space Flight Center and College Park Airport.
Just 6.5 miles northeast of Washington DC, NASA established their first flight center here in 1959. It continues to be a major space research laboratory and the location where they manage communications between mission control and orbiting astronauts on the International Space Station. It was named after Dr. Robert Goddard who is considered the father of modern rocket propulsion. The visitor center at Goddard is open to the public Tuesdays through Sundays and displays the spacecraft and technologies that were developed there.
This center is a good reminder that although we hear more today about billionaires racing to build passenger rockets, NASA is still doing a lot of work with the International Space Station and Hubble to help us to learn more about our own planet and help in us ways you might not even know like monitoring water quality, climate change and applying learnings from space to improve medical devices as well as understanding diseases like osteoporosis.
Doug rode his bike from the campground to the College Park Airport, which has some interesting aviation history. It was established in 1909 as the military demonstration site for the Wright Brothers and is thus, the world’s oldest operating airport! It had several other first as well (see the sign below).
If you’re into aviation – past and present – these free visits are informative and interesting.
