ARTICLES: Hikes

Boardwalk to Beach

"Best boardwalks in Maryland”, which we posted back in January, was one of our most...
Favorite Maryland Lighthouse

Favorite Maryland Lighthouse

Although we have sailed past most of the famous lighthouses of the Chesapeake, our favorite is probably one you’ve never heard of — a modest little light station on the north bank of the Potomac. You would think that, after more than two decades sailing and paddling...

Food Worth the Trip: Ethnic Groceries Edition

Food Worth the Trip: Ethnic Groceries Edition

Ethnic groceries aren’t just the best places to buy good food, they’re the next best thing to traveling to exotic destinations.  Let’s just get this part out of the way: The best ethnic grocery in the DMV is the Patel Brothers’ Farmers Market in Gaithersburg.  As...

Maryland History, Bit by Bit

Maryland History, Bit by Bit

Maryland’s heritage isn’t just about historic homes and major cultural events. Sometimes the smallest objects tell the most interesting stories. Sara Rivers-Cofield, one of the curators at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab in Calvert County, has an uncanny...

A Beach Of Your Own

A Beach Of Your Own

We owe our discovery of the beach at Snow Hill to the flowers.  Someone had told us about Dixon Family Farm, an old corn and bean farm in St. Mary’s County that now grows lavender and runs a pick-your-own-flowers operation. That sounded right up our alley, especially...

Best Boardwalks In Maryland

Best Boardwalks In Maryland

SERC may seem an unlikely location for a public boardwalk. One of the least familiar facilities of the Smithsonian Institution, best known for their ecological and conservation research, and its scientists have been at the forefront of the effort to address the...

Learning To Fly

Learning To Fly

If you want to turn a P-51 Mustang around quickly, push the control stick to one side to make the plane roll in that direction, then pull back on the yoke, forcing the World War II aircraft to bank sharply. It’s the same procedure with an F-14 Tomcat,...

Alpacas and Obstacles

Alpacas and Obstacles

Arts and crafts provide some of the most reliable fodder for high-quality microEXCURSIONS. Of course, the great museums of Washington and Baltimore are choc-o-block with world-class art. But urban centers aren’t always the best places to find crafts.In DC, you can...

Not Your Run Of The Mill Mill

Not Your Run Of The Mill Mill

Here at microEXCURSIONS, we believe that travel is largely about serendipity. It cannot be done properly by sticking aciduously to a schedule or a prescribed route. The key to adventure is to yield to curiosity. Whether we’re driving down a country lane, hiking in a...

The Best Barn In Maryland

The Best Barn In Maryland

Dawn and I have a thing for barns. Where we live, down in Southern Maryland, we mostly see big old tobacco barns, sometimes two or three on a single farm. That’s because this was once tobacco country, and the old plantations needed big, airy barns to dry and cure the...

Maryland Geology Day Trip

Maryland Geology Day Trip

“Next week, let’s go look at some folded hills,” Dawn said.We had just gotten a new copy of The Roadside Geology of Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C., so I knew what she had in mind. She wanted to see some clues to how the environs we know so well came to look...