Celebrate National Get Outdoors Day at Pocahontas State Park

National Get Outdoors Day is Saturday, June 11th, and the folks at Pocahontas State Park really hope you’ll spend it with them!

June 10, 2016; 9:28 AM • by Valerie Catrow

Photo by: Davidlind

Saturday, June 11th is National Get Outdoors Day, an annual event focused on encouraging us crazy Americans to partake in healthy, active, outdoor fun.

National Get Outdoors Day launched in June of 2008 when the USDA Forest Service and the American Recreation Coalition combined forces to create, according to its website, “an inclusive, nationwide effort focusing on a single day when people would be inspired and motivated to get outdoors.” Since then National Get Outdoors Day has partnered each year with federal, state, and local agencies, as well as recreation businesses, to offer fun outdoor experiences to the public.

Sounds great, right? Now, technically you can take part in National Get Outdoors Day wherever you like1, but I suggest keeping it super legit by spending the day at Pocahontas State Park, 8,115 acres of preserved and state-protected land just 20 minutes outside of Richmond.

Pocahontas State Park is offering a full day of activities to get you and yours stoked about being outside. The day’s schedule will go as follows…

  • What’s Bugging You?
    10:00 – 11:00 AM
  • Radical Reptiles
    12:00 – 1:00 PM
  • Meet a Tree2
    2:00 – 3:30 PM
  • Survive Pocahontas3
    4:00 – 5:00 PM
  • Warm Welcome4
    7:00 – 8:30 PM

During downtime between sessions, be sure to check out the park’s biking and hiking trails; maybe do some fishing; rent a boat and cruise around Swift Creek and Beaver Lakes; or go for a swim in the Aquatic Recreation Center.5

Pocahontas State Park is located at 10301 State Park Road in Chesterfield (ZIP code 23832 for those of you looking to GPS it). Parking is $4 on weekdays and $5 on weekends. For more information on Pocahontas State Park, head over to its section on the Virginia State Parks website.

  1. Other than inside. That would literally defeat the purpose of the day. ↩
  2. I’m not sure why meeting a tree would take 90 minutes, but I’m not a state park employee, so what do I know? ↩
  3. Maybe this involves seeing if you can hack it in a setting similar to that in which Pocahontas lived? Or maybe the person they have pretending to be Pocahontas is really insufferable? ↩
  4. Not a ton of details on this one either, but with a name like that, how could this be unpleasant? ↩
  5. Swimming costs $5 for ages 3 to 12 and $6 for ages 13 and up. ↩
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Valerie Catrow

Valerie Catrow is editor of RVAFamily, mother to a mop-topped first grader, and always really excited to go to bed.

June 10, 2016 9:28 AM 0

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