Your guide to activities and fun things to do with your preschoolers, toddlers and kids in baltimore, MD

 

The park, which is located mere feet from a BWI-owned landing area, provides, as you might expect, excellent views of incoming aircraft.  You can see the planes--just distant spots at first--approaching from a pretty good distance, and then watch them as they get closer and closer, until they shock you with their roar and gust as they half-glide/half-lumber toward the runway.  Each landing--and there are a lot of landings--is noisy and impressive.  And chances are that a visit to Tom Dixon will leave you and the kids all-the-more itchy for air travel . . . which, now that I mention it, is kind of counter to the whole point of this post, isn't it?  Anyway, pervasive wanderlust aside, you won't be sorry that you went to Tom Dixon.  And here, as if getting all up close and personal with planes weren't enough, are still more compelling reasons to visit Tom Dixon:

 

1.  It's a fantastic place to ride a bike.  The BWI Trail runs right past the observation area and directly beneath the paths of the jets.  As far as I know, there's no other bike trail quite like this one.

 

2.  There's a playground.  There aren't any swings, and there isn't a sandbox, but you can count on plenty of monkey bars and slides.

 

3.  There's a grassy area where you can enjoy a picnic.

 

4.  I did mention the almost-terrifying proximity to planes, right? 

 

Seriously, if your kid's into airplanes (or anything big and noisy, for that matter), you've got to make the trip to Tom Dixon.  Even I, in my jaded adulthood, think the place is really awesome. Plus, it's kind of like getting away without getting away . . . and what could be more awesome than that?