I am just getting warmed up on discussing free activities in your local area. Today, the theme is "staycations." If you aren't familiar with a staycation, it's when one takes time off of work and just sort of stays put or stays local as opposed to heading out of town. Since times are lean, this concept is growing in popularity.
Well, I have news. You don't have to just stay put because your wallet is not up for it. Enjoy the great outdoors with the bonus benefit of not dealing with as many annoying tourists. A hint: when you come across other hikers/tourists in National Parks, they are typically among the friendliest, most considerate you can meet. There are exceptions of course. Yosemite, which is by far one of the top parks in the nation, does seem to attract a wide swath of tourists. They have many pedestrian accessible paths (and even a tram) that tends to attract loud folks that might be better off at the mall.
In DC, we had a nice weekend last Sunday before it got crappy here to do a local day hiking trip. I am pretty lucky that Rock Creek National Park is literally in my backyard. Awesome doesn't begin to describe it. For those who haven't seen it, what are you waiting for?
For everyone else, I recently came across a very cool site that O'bama's people put together, RecData.gov. This site is basically a clearinghouse of National Park locations. While it may be a more fancy way of just packaging existing National Park Service information, I was impressed. It's easy to find your local park by searching for it by state.
Now go out and get going!
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