Weird day trips from Washington, D.C.

The strangest Washington, D.C. finds are often a short drive out. These 10 day trips — American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM), National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Dinosaur Land and more — are each hand-vetted and sourced: ghost towns, hot-spring soaks, roadside oddities, and odd small-town museums worth the gas. A weird day trip is its own kind of date.

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American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) Congress named this the official national museum of outsider/visionary art — self-taught artists, no MFAs, no… Federal Hill, Baltimore, MD
National Museum of Civil War Medicine Housed in a 19th-century building that doubled as a furniture maker's shop and undertaker's parlor during the… Frederick, MD
Dinosaur Land Over 50 hand-built fiberglass dinosaurs crowd two wooded acres off Route 340, some dating to the park's 1963… White Post, VA
W.F. Moran Bladesmith & Artisan Academy A modern forging hall built "yards from Bill Moran's forge" — the actual farm shop where self-taught knifemak… Middletown, MD
Ms Caitlin's School of Blacksmithing A one-woman blacksmithing school in a downtown Frederick storefront, run by a smith who is 5'5" and spent fou… Downtown Frederick, MD
Point Lookout State Park & Lighthouse Union guards, including U.S. Colored Troops regiments made up partly of formerly enslaved men, ran a Civil Wa… Scotland, MD (St. Mary's County)
Elkridge Furnace Inn An 1835 ironmaster's house sits on the site of Caleb Dorsey's 1751 furnace, which forged cannons and bayonets… Elkridge, MD
LOTUS Shrine, Yogaville A gold-leafed, lotus-flower-shaped shrine rises over the James River with twelve separate altars — one each f… Buckingham, VA
Sky Meadows State Park An International Dark Sky Park an hour past the DC exurbs, where volunteer astronomers set up telescopes for… Delaplane, VA
Mallows Bay Ghost Fleet Around 100 wooden WWI 'Ghost Fleet' steamships — part of a roughly 200-vessel wreck field, the largest in the… Nanjemoy, MD (Charles County)