Maryland, DC, Virginia Rank Among Best Places To Visit National Parks
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Looking for a stay-cation idea? You may want to head to a national park.
RV rental website Outdoorsy ranked Maryland the 8th-best place to visit a national park in the country thanks to the state's 18 different parks.
States surrounding Maryland also ranked highly on the list: Pennsylvania came in 7th, Virginia came in 5th and Washington, D.C. was the second-best after California. Delaware, meanwhile, came in last due to it only having a single national park.
National parks have been a popular destination amid the COVID-19 pandemic; preliminary data from the National Park Service shows year-to-date visits at Catoctin Mountain Park near Thurmont are up 55% over last year as of October. Visits to the Assateague Island National Seashore are up nearly 4.5% over the same period.
Other parks in Maryland have seen attendance drop significantly in 2020. Year-to-date visits at Fort McHenry in Baltimore were down nearly 62% as of November and visits to the Chesapeake and Ohio National Historical Park were also down 7%.