This weekend, What to Do & Where to Go goes Behind the Scenes to Heritage Days, a two-day, county-wide festival featuring historic, cultural and green sites in Montgomery County. All events and activities are presented free of charge.

Why spend a fortune tripping over the ruins of Pompeii this summer? (Really! Somebody ought to clean that place up, it’s a pedestrian hazard!) Instead, you can journey to another time at any one of the 33 heritage sites included in Heritage Days. With all the office buildings and strip malls sprouting up, many of us forget that Montgomery County was settled in the 1750s. But, dig around and you’ll find layers of local history under all that shiny newness. Let’s see what’s in your backyard, Germantown! 

King Barn Dairy Mooseum—Dairy farming was once big business in Montgomery County, with nearly 300 farms producing milk and dairy products. That's a lot cows. Learn about that boom industry at the MOOseum—worth visiting just for the name alone. This weekend you'll see demonstrations of milking equipment and butter making. Kids can "milk" the model cows, see live animals, enjoy a puppet show and get artsy with children's crafts. On Saturday, "Balloon Man" will make hats for children from noon to 2 p.m.; on Sunday, there will be ice cream tastings from noon to 3 p.m.

DC/RC Radio Control Club—Go up, up and away as exquisitely-made model aircraft zoom overhead in daring feats of aerobatics. What you'll see: model air show, aerobatics, jet turbine demos, helicopter demos and scale models of WWII planes. If you love airplanes, THIS is the place for you. These events take place at the South Germantown Park.

Button Farm Living History Center—Situated on 40-acres inside of Seneca Creek State Park, the Button Farm is Maryland's only living history center depicting 19th-century slave plantation life and the heroic story of the Underground Railroad. During Heritage Days you can tour the heirloom garden, the Civil War era barn, the reconstructed plantation quarters and the slave cemetery. Living history reenactors will provide lively demonstrations of everyday life dating back some 150 years ago.

This weekend, take a journey down the street, across the county, back in time or across an ocean with Heritage Days. Click here to see the full brochure of all sites and activities.