Gravelly Point Park
Part Of The George Washington Memorial Parkway, Administered By The National Park Service · Arlington, Virginia
A flat green field on the Potomac shore that sits directly off the end of the main runway at Reagan Washington National Airport, so close that arriving aircraft cross the fence at something like a hundred feet and you feel the engines in your chest before you hear them. It is a National Park Service field, part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, with nothing on it but grass, a few trees, ball fields, a boat launch and portable toilets - and that is the whole point, because the attraction is overhead. Which way the aircraft go depends on the wind: on a south flow they land over your head one after another, roughly a minute apart at peak; on a north flow they take off over you instead, which is louder and arguably better. The Mount Vernon Trail runs straight through, so half the people here arrived on a bicycle, and across the water the Washington Monument, the Capitol and the Jefferson Memorial line up behind the aircraft, which is why the photograph everybody takes here is the one with a jet and a monument in the same frame.
George Washington Memorial Parkway northbound, north of Reagan National Airport, Arlington, Virginia, 22202, United States
Open daily from dawn until dark; the car park closes at dark and is reachable ONLY from the northbound George Washington Memorial Parkway. Free. Aircraft traffic is heaviest roughly 7-10 AM and 4-8 PM, and a night curfew at Reagan National means there is almost nothing flying after about 10 PM.
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