Ballenger Creek, MD Outdoor Activities

At Adventure Park USA, visitors amble, shriek, and laugh through a sprawling 17.5 acres replete with Old West–themed rides and attractions such as the Wildcat roller coaster, which dips and curves around a track in order to elicit screams of joy akin to Steven Tyler on Christmas morning. Outdoor diversions such as bumper boats and go-karts stoke competitive fires, and a collection of little tykes rides invite pintsize riders to spin in teacups or gallop on carousel horseback. Open year-round, a 22,000-square-foot indoor playzone thumbs its nose at inclement weather with laser tag, an arcade, a ropes course, and a climbing wall. Owner Larry Stottlemeyer continues to expand this already extensive list of family-friendly diversions.

Sitting behind the wheel of a 32 Sodi RX7 kart has a way of making you feel like a professional stunt driver. Maybe it's zipping up your driver’s suit, or snapping on your helmet. Either way, at Summit Point Kart, all participants get the look they want and the safety orientation they need to cut turns like Andretti when they take on that piece of half-mile track known as the Washington Circuit.

Overhead, lights blaze down on the track’s 20 turns, so karters can race well into the evening or on that day after summer solstice when the sun is too partied out to get out of bed. Racers who get hooked can get themselves a yearly membership card, which discounts the price of racing credits. Little ones enamored with the track can enlist in kart school, a daylong camp that builds confidence behind the wheel.

Nestled in the rolling hills of Maryland's countryside, the Wakefield Valley Golf Club showcases three different nine-hole courses. Each course presents a unique set of challenges, with the green course showcasing lengthy par 5s and the white course challenging golfers with hilly terrain and water holes that lure errant shots and experimental scuba-tank golf bags. The gold course, meanwhile, sets up demanding tee shots into narrow fairways, as seen on its signature eighth hole, where water guards the green on all sides.

Golfers can warm up for rounds at the driving range and practice green or employ the swing-honing advice of PGA Professional Scott Magee, who teaches enough students to believe that he will find one who can pull a putter from a stone. Guests can also refuel rumbling stomachs with casual food and drinks at Fenby’s Restaurant.

Northern Virginia's Premier High Speed Indoor Kart Race Track

Course architect Gary Player remarked that Raspberry Plain, once an 18th-century plantation, “was made for a golf course.” Inspired by this ideal setting, he dreamed up the links-style course at Raspberry Falls Golf & Hunt Club, whose meandering brooks, stone walls, and stacked-sod bunkers evoke Scotland, while its vista of the Catoctin Mountains remind players they’re in Virginia. Farther south, Augustine Golf Club's award-winning course rivals Raspberry Falls’ natural beauty with its distinctive par 4s sculpted by Rick Jacobson. Although the greens at Augustine declined for a few years, recent renovations have restored the course to its former glory, once again luring golfers to its babbling streams and forest.

These golf havens have more than picturesque views in common—they are two of six award-winning courses united by Raspberry Golf Management’s portfolio, which stretches from Virginia to Pennsylvania and skips over to Arizona. Gary Player’s design team for Raspberry Falls included Tim Freeland, who went on to design two of the firm’s other courses: Royal Manchester Golf Links, whose bentgrass fairways sidle up to the Susquehanna River, and Old Hickory Golf Club, a parkland-style course crisscrossed by Beaver Creek. The management company's other gems include The Legacy Golf Resort, where cowboys used to ride their rocking horses around a 7,500-acre ranch, and Bull Run Golf Club, which sprawls across more than 450 acres of meadows and woodlands at the foot of the Bull Run Mountains.

Named after "The Star Spangled Banner" songwriter and Frederick County resident Francis Scott Key, the Frederick Keys have represented the Baltimore Orioles as their Class-A affiliate since 1989. In the decades since, they've claimed the Carolina League championship four times, most recently in 2011. During the seventh inning stretch, up to 5,400 fans rise inside Harry Grove Stadium for a rendition of "We're the Frederick Keys," a song that encourages fans to shake their car keys, house keys, or any Keys player that needs a stern pep talk.