Trail lovers in Richmond have it good. Really good, and we know it.
I covered the first-ever Richmond Trail Forum for RichmondOutside.com. The crowd of more than 100 people was impressive, with more than 100 people in attendance and everyone seemed quite invested in the direction of the forum discussion.
One of the consistent messages throughout the hour and a half forum was that we didn’t get to where we are without volunteers. Clearly, volunteers matter and without their constant assistance, the trails network would die. And along with it, all of the economic and social benefits are region gets from living in “an outdoor recreation mecca,” as James River Park superintendent Nathan Burrell put it during the discussion.
I volunteer with several groups between rvaMORE, James River Outdoor Coalition, and the Friends of the James River Park. There were plenty of volunteers from those groups at the meeting, but also represented were people from Richmond Road Runners and James River Hikers. Again, we are so fortunate to have so many dedicated park lovers.
Recently, I got a chance to help one of the parks closest to my house, which is also a part of my occasional mountain bike commutes to work. rvaMORE is working on upgrading an old bridge across a creek in Larus Park and also needed to do some repairs to a creek crossing just north of the tunnel under the Chippenham Parkway. I got to work on both, but was personally pleased to get to improve the newly rock-armored creek crossing.
Andy Thompson walked through the park with his family while we worked and was inspired to write about it on RichmondOutside.com. I added a few photos of the nearly finished project on Twitter to help promote the story.
Phil Riggan 