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I lived in the DC area for over 20 years.

I’m not the greatest expert in leaf viewing, but Skyline Drive asking the Blue Ridge is famous for leaf viewers and is near the DC area.

I don’t know the last time you visited your son but a couple of things for a general-purpose visit to the area:

1) Tolls. There are toll roads everywhere that depend on camera tolling (no toll booths) and variable tolling depending on the time of day and volume of traffic. Rental car companies will sometimes have an EZ-Pass installed on the car and will charge you a huge surcharge on top of the toll. Famous for outrageous tolls are I-66 from Dulles to Arlington and I-395 from Springfield to Arlington.

2) Speeding cameras. Certain localities in the DC area are famous for cameras. Be careful.

3) Hotel pricing. Hotels in the immediate DC area are outrageous but are a lot more affordable immediately outside of the area. That’s primarily because of how the government calculates per diem rates. The point being that in some cases you can go just a few miles away and save a massive amount

4) Local sales taxes in Virginia. Each county / independent city in Virginia has their own sales taxes that can be applied to different things. Arlington County has some of the highest prices due to local taxes. From my experience, Fairfax County has noticably cheaper prices because tax is not so high.

5) Speaking of which, if you want to buy booze, Costco in Washington DC sells booze at Costco prices. Virginia Costcos (to include the one in Crystal City) only sell beer/wine. There are a couple of decent Class VI stores at Ft Belvoir, but otherwise beer/wine are run by Virginia ABC so pricing and selection is not as good as elsewhere.

6) If you like Turkish food (kebabs), Atilla’s on Columbia Pike has pretty respectable food (and nice people running the place too). I recommend their Iskendir Kebab. Not as good as in Turkey, but fully edible. For Thai food, Bangkok 54 is pretty good. Again, nowhere near as good as here in Thailand, but fully edible. The Thai market next door has a little shop where you can get Beef Noodle Soup (Thai version of Pho). Very authentic as 90% of the people that eat in the market restaurant are Thais and not whites...

Hope the above helps