Washington DC is the ultimate cheap vacation destination (assuming you’re within driving distance) and one every American family should do at least once. All of the activities I have listed here, other than transportation, were free. Trips to our Capital require comfortable walking shoes, wearing layers, and keeping hydrated. Have a camera ready and be ready to learn.

Our DC experience, appropriately so for this blog, was a camping trip. I pulled the pop-up, we set up camp in Maryland, and we took the subway a couple stops away into DC. It brought us right to the strip of museums at the National Mall. We only had a few days in DC because it was a stop on the way to Virginia Beach for us. So we only spent one day doing the museums, although it could easily have been spread into 2 whole days or more. So many of them are free and there’s something for everyone. They have art, history, science, culture, and it’s all free. Look up the map ahead of time and plan which museums you most want to see, because you simply won’t have time to do it all in one day. The Capitol building is at the end of the strip of museums so once the museums closed, the last one at 7:30pm, we chose to walk around it and take pictures before heading back to the campground.

The National Zoo is part of the Smithsonian as well, and therefore, also free. It also happens to be located on a hill. It’s a large zoo and you can easily spend the day there. My biggest piece of advice here, is to start at the bottom of the hill! If you’re spending all day walking the zoo, and it’s a lot of walking, by the time you’re done, I guarantee you won’t want to walk uphill back to your car. Start at the bottom, spend the day walking uphill, and when you get to the end, walk down hill back to the car.

We drove into the city the day we saw the monuments. I parked at Arlington  National Cemetery and we started out there in the morning. After seeing the cemetery, we walked over the bridge to the loop of monuments and memorials. We went right in a circle hitting them all and finished up just in time at the end of the day before it got dark back at the beginning of the loop, across from the cemetery again. One thing to be aware of, the cemetery parking lot does close at 8pm and it is gated and locked, so you need to be out by 8. We made it by 8, but my car was the last one there and they were waiting to close the gate when I got there.

Washington D.C. is one of those places that you could spend weeks exploring and still mot see it all, but you can cram a lot into a short period of time if you’re just going for a week or a weekend. It’s the kind of trip you can throw together last minute, but if you have it planned ahead of time, make sure to get a free tour of the White House by contacting them 3 months ahead of time.

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*pic- Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C., 2015