Montgomery County (Maryland)

• Cabin John Regional Park — regular free concerts in the woods during the summer, and younger kids will love the elaborate playgrounds.
• 🌍 Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park — a beautiful park alongside the Potomac River, home to the impressive Great Falls.
• Brookside Gardens — 50 acres of beautiful and diverse landscaped gardens, both indoor and outdoor.
• Glen Echo — a historic amusement park by the Potomac, dating from the nineteenth century, with a still-active antique carousel, a historic electric street car, frequent festivals and plays, and perhaps the D.C. region's largest social dance scene.
• Rock Creek Park — the Maryland portion of the famous National Park, with one very long bike/pedestrian path through the woods, and plenty of small parks for sports, playgrounds, etc.

For sightseeing, you are best off heading south into D.C., which has more major attractions than you can shake a stick at. But if you've been there, done that, there are some off-the-beaten-path attractions in Montgomery County. There are several quite unusual destinations that can make for a good trip. The National Mormon Temple in Kensington is enormous and impressive, famously drawing comparisons to the Oz's Emerald Palace from daredevil Beltway graffiti artists. You can't go inside, but you can take pictures from the outside and learn about the temple and the Church of Latter Day Saints at its visitor center. Nearby in Forest Glen is the very weird collection of exotic buildings at the half-abandoned National Park Seminary: a Japanese pagoda, a Swiss-style castle, a Dutch windmill, etc. Glen Echo is a unique "antique amusement park," still operating a carousel, a Spanish ballroom for dance lessons and events, dramatic theater, and other attractions.

The one truly big attraction worth seeking out, though, is the imposing Great Falls on the Potomac River in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park. The Maryland side boasts the best views of this massive collection of rapids and waterfalls, and makes for a great picnic. The park itself would be worth visiting even without the draw of the falls for its historic charm. For more outdoor attractions, try Wheaton's lovely Brookside Gardens.

In particular, Rockville and Bethesda have many shops from which to buy clothes, trinkets, antiques, and souvenirs. Gaithersburg and Germantown, on the other hand, generally cater more to local suburbanites but have a few interesting options as well. True to its bohemian roots, Takoma Park (and to a lesser extent, [[Silver Spring) hosts several quirky independent stores, bookstores and galleries that make it worth the trip from D.C.

Given how affluent and international Montgomery County is, it's hardly surprising that there is a lot of good food to be had. For a downtown dining experience, Bethesda is the unchallenged leader, with a huge variety of mid-range and upscale restaurants, running the gamut from Spanish tapas to Maryland crabs, gourmet Indian to Philly cheesesteaks, with a host of great options in between. There are gems throughout the other major cities, like Silver Spring, Rockville, Gaithersburg, etc.—albeit quite crowded out by legions of mid-range chain restaurants both in the respective downtown areas and on the endless strip malls throughout.

If you have a taste for cuisines around the world, you are in luck, and won't have to spend too much money. Wheaton has arguably the best cheap ethnic eats in the whole D.C. metro area, especially for great Asian and Central American food, due to its significant Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Guatemalan, Honduran, and especially Salvadoran communities. For each of those categories, you simply will not find better outside Wheaton. It's not too shabby for Korean, Ethiopian, Peruvian, or even Scottish, for that matter. Rockville, Silver Spring, and Takoma Park cannot boast the sort of density of ethnic restaurants as Wheaton, but are nonetheless also good bets for Asian, African, and Latin American food.

As with restaurants, Bethesda has the county's largest and liveliest nightlife scene, with a ton of bars and a good handful of night clubs. In the past decade, however, Silver Spring and Rockville have become a legitimate challengers, especially so with younger residents and you'll find plenty after dark right in both their respective downtowns. Both offer cheaper and more diverse options, than upscale Bethesda. For an even more diverse and certainly more offbeat experience, Takoma Park has only a few options, but they are a lot of fun.

You won't have trouble finding your basic bar in any of the other major communities throughout the community, but options are fairly limited by way of clubs. Not to worry, though, since D.C. is right next door!

Hotels, of which there are many—Marriott is headquartered in Bethesda—are to be found mostly around the county's major downtown cores and near Metro stations. Those of Bethesda and Silver Spring cater more to tourists, looking to enjoy easy access to the D.C. Metro and the nearby restaurants and entertainment, while those of Rockville, the Rockville Pike, Gaithersburg, and Germantown cater more to business travelers. If you are looking for roadside motels off I-270 or the Beltway, you might actually be surprised at just how few options there are—you'll likely need to head a good ways off the highway into town.

Aside from car accidents, which are indeed a problem, Montgomery County is about as safe a highly populated area as you'll find anywhere in the United States. The gang crime and robbery problems that plague the nation's capital simply do not spill across the district borders, with a robbery rate of just 100 per 100,000 residents in 2007. You might occasionally hear murmurs of Silver Spring or Wheaton having a crime problem, but this notion simply does not align with reality as shown by police statistics. Unless wandering alone late at night in an isolated part of a deserted downtown area, you are quite unlikely to become a victim of a crime.

The obvious nearby destination is of course Washington, D.C., the capital of the U.S., home to a mind-bogglingly long list of attractions, some of which are a either short drive down Connecticut Ave or a ride on the Metro's Red Line. The National Zoo, the Hillwood Estate, the Uptown Theatre, and the National Cathedral are all within easy striking distance from Bethesda. If you are east of Rock Creek Park by Silver Spring or Takoma Park, it's a short drive down Blair Rd to North Capitol St to get to Brookland to see the National Shrine. To get to the National Mall, or the city's principal wining and dining centers, you'll have to travel a bit further, but the Metro will take you right there without hitch.

There is more to see other than the obvious neighbor to the south, though. Baltimore is a city very rich in history, museums, and seafood, and is a very short trip up I-95. Staying even closer to Montgomery County, try going east on the Beltway into Prince George's County to see the NASA Goddard Visitor Center at Greenbelt, or Six Flags Amusement Park in Largo.