Exploring the state’s wealth of tourist destinations is merely a keyboard click and car ride away.
What’s the best way to explore Maryland this late summer and fall season? Jmore recently spoke with Liz Fitzsimmons, managing director of the Maryland Office of Tourism, for some expert travel advice.
A Baltimore County resident who unabashedly loves all of the state’s five regions as determined by the Office of Tourism — Western, Capital, Central, Southern and the Eastern Shore — Fitzsimmons talked about why Maryland is the ultimate travel destination for “staycations,” day trips, extended detours and more.
Jmore: What are some features that make Maryland distinct from other destinations?
LF: We have the most amazing stretch of beach over on the Atlantic, with Ocean City and then we have ponies [in Assateague]. Gosh, who else has ponies on their beaches?
We have 18 scenic byways, six of which are nationally recognized. We have all these water-related activities, the thousands of miles of Chesapeake Bay shoreline and creeks, our rivers — Potomac, Patuxent, Susquehanna, and of course, Deep Creek Lake — and all the activities that go along with that. Fly fishing and canoeing and our water and land trail systems are really extraordinary.
We are one of the few states, if not the only state, that has a program that stands alongside our Department of Natural Resources and connects consumers to outdoor recreational activities, whether it’s charter boat fishing, learning how to fly fish and that type of thing. We are the only state with the Fly Fishing Trail [in Baltimore City and each of Maryland’s 23 counties].
What are Maryland’s most frequently visited sites and counties?
Montgomery County ranks right up there, being near D.C., and then the C&O [Chesapeake and Ohio] Canal is a really popular site.
Anne Arundel County, with our state capital Annapolis and the [U.S.] Naval Academy, and of course there’s Maryland Live [Casino] and the Arundel Mills complex.
Prince George’s County with the National Harbor, FedEx Field; the lovely, small towns in Baltimore County that have hundreds of miles of shoreline and are just a great place to visit, with the Patapsco Valley State Park right there.
Baltimore City, the urban center of our great state; Ocean City in Worcester County; and then Howard County and Columbia.
What are some highlights of the late summer/early fall season?
Every time is a great time to visit Maryland. But we have the Maryland Folk Festival in Salisbury from Sept. 22 to 24, and the Oceans Calling Festival in Ocean City from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1.
Deep Creek Lake is great in the fall. We’ll be having the Autumn Glory Festival from Oct. 11 to 15 in Oakland — six miles south of Deep Creek Lake — which is an opportunity to celebrate the best of Western Maryland. There’s a banjo and fiddlers convention. There’s a parade. There are small town shops down in Oakland, the Spruce Forest Artisan Village [and] great food. It really is a special time.
It’s called Autumn Glory for a reason. The mountains are just alive with color.
If you can, I suggest traveling during the midweek. You’re less hassled, and you may get better rates.
Has Maryland’s tourism industry bounced back since the pandemic?
Yes. We don’t have our tourism economic impact numbers yet, but we’re seeing from our sales tax revenue numbers that we’re up 2% from 2019, even if you take inflation into account.
Why is tourism — in-state and from out of state — so crucial to Maryland?
Tourism is very important to our state’s economy. We’re the 11th largest private sector employer in the state. Pre-pandemic, we had 150,000 people working in the tourism industry. Direct jobs. And then, we all saw what happened during the pandemic, and we’re working our way back up. We’re at 130,000 direct employees right now. And the last economic impact report we had was $16.4 billion in revenue, $2.1 billion in sales and tax revenue.
For the average person who’s reading this, if you wanted the goods and services that are provided by our municipalities, state government, local government — roads, schools, all those things — each one of us would have to put forth an additional $950 a year. And that’s the savings that every one of our visitors brings us in real dollars.
So vacationing in Maryland is an investment in Maryland. It provides each great quality of life — schools, roads, all of those really important things — but also that really great restaurant, that museum. You wouldn’t have those places that are really dear and special to you if it wasn’t for visitor spending.
What’s the best way to plan a vacation or getaway here?
We have a saying in our office that the reason we’re in tourism is because we’re happy to tell you where to go. VisitMaryland.org is going to be your best spot to see everything that we have.
We have it organized by destinations, by interest and then by regions. The search engine’s robust so if you type something in, you’ll get results back.
About 3.1 million people go to our website each year, and we work really hard on analyzing our visitor’s journey on our site so that we can continually provide customers the information they’ve either told us they want or we’ve watched them look for.
Our Welcome Centers on state highways are helpful, too. The great thing about our Welcome Centers is they’re in that destination, so their knowledge may be a little bit more enhanced because they’re living like a local.
Any off-the-beaten-path sites in Maryland you’d recommend?
A couple of years ago, Mallows Bay in the town of Nanjemoy [in Charles County in Southern Maryland] was declared a National Marine Sanctuary. You can kayak out to see the Ghost Fleet of the Potomac [the largest collection of historic shipwrecks in the Western Hemisphere]. There are about 200 boats that have been shipwrecked there, and it’s turned into a nesting sanctuary. So if you get out on your kayak and put your paddles up on your vessel and just sit, it’s one of the prettiest places on the planet.
What about the Underground Railroad Experience Trail?
Maryland is the most powerful Underground Railroad storytelling destination in the world. There is a program that originates out of the National Park Service called the ‘Network to Freedom.’ The network has all these Underground Railroad sites where you can learn about [Dorchester County-born abolitionist and social activist] Harriet Tubman and the freedom seekers and their journey.
The Underground Railroad was a secret network and there are a lot of stories about it, not all of them true. The ‘Network to Freedom’ helps authenticate those stories. It’s really powerful.
We are really fortunate in this state that, generationally, we have maintained so much of our lands in the public trust. When you’re standing at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center and State Park in Church Creek just south of Cambridge, Maryland, you’re adjacent to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. If you get there around dusk, you can feel the power of that landscape. And then, think about those [escaped enslaved people] who moved through those marshes to be able to make their way to freedom.
Your own personal favorite getaway in the state?
Anytime I am with my family in Maryland is my favorite getaway because the places in the state are extraordinary and the people who live here are amazing and so helpful and so nice.
I’m kind of an outdoor gal, so if you put me and my bicycle and my family on any one of our trails, I am the happiest camper.
For information about Maryland travel, go to visitmaryland.org.
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