So you have the family together and you want to go somewhere interesting and fun.

All right, here's your excitement, more than some people want. There are more than 100 rides, slides, shows and attractions, including eight coasters, other major league thrill rides and Hurricane Harbor, a water park. The park has some frightful fun on weekends in October.

Washington's rivers are dotted with sailboats when the weather warms, and for the hearty, year-round. You can try your hand at a helm at the Mariner Sailing School in Alexandria on the Potomac. Young people start out with a Sunfish, learning skills of rigging and maneuvering and which side is por...

This park offers several venues and serves up an arts and cultural center, carousel, artists at work, dances, workshops, classes and camps.

Soar above it all, looking down on the Shenandoah Valley and the foothills of the Blue Ridge, like a hawk riding the air currents. What part of the area you see depends on the day's winds. Balloons soar from western Loudoun County. Passengers may fly the balloon if they want.

Here's a chance to get out of the car and ride in a wagon behind horses through the working farm's 286 acres.

Adventure Playground: This playground features a pirate ship, mazes, a rock climbing wall, a world map on the ground and an African delta playground with animal sculptures.

Here's another farm, a 520-acre Howard County beauty that offers educational tours by appointment, nature trails, a greenhouse and animals to feed and beekeepers to watch.

A working farm that is maintained as a reminder of agriculture, once the staple of Fairfax County. The park, with its Kidwell Farm, interprets agriculture, rural community life and landscape from the 1920s to 1950s. Among the attractions are its cows, pigs, chickens, goats and turkeys.

You've seen the new James Bond, and now you can become a prospective agent and learn about spycraft and spy history, even if you fail the neat interactive tests.

This is Fauquier County, one of Virginia's premium horse country areas, and there is plenty of interest in this popular park with access to the Appalachian Trail. There are bridle trails and hiking trails galore, with some primitive, hike-in campsites for those who want to rough it.

The culture and natural history of Southern Maryland is preserved and interpreted in the exhibits and research of this museum. One permanent exhibit tells the story of human activity along the Patuxent River from the 17th-century colonial period to the present, including river transportation, tra...