Green = Green

We spent a few days last week near the Atlantic around Virginia Beach. It was one of the rare days when it wasn’t raining or snowing, and we had been visiting some friends. After a good night’s sleep, we woke extra early, and leaving our shoes behind, wandered down to the shore and sat with our behinds in the cool sand to watch the sun come up. Grabbed some errant foam cups and fishing line on the way back to the house and started breakfast. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Before that, we spent a day by the river in Richmond. Did you know that Outside Magazine named Richmond America’s Best River City? Just west of the city, there’s fantastic flat-water for canoeing. Right in the middle of Downtown, in the shadow of the Federal Reserve and the Governor’s Mansion, you can kayak a Class Five rapid. Just below Richmond, you again enter calmer water, eventually hitting navigable deep water that follows the same ebb and flow of the Chesapeake Bay’s tides.

We spent the day mountain biking some trails that had recently been spruced up by Canvass for Cannabis. They’re avid bikers, and love the outdoors, and as usual, they did an amazing job on the trails. On our way back to the trailheads, we found some plastic bags that had recently blown in. They came out with us, and we headed home, dirty and tired. Doesn’t get much better than that.

As most of America began biting its nails about college basketball, we went and visited some friends near Blacksburg. Beautiful mountain country, and Hokie-central. Stopped by Grayson Highlands State Park to watch some folks do some bouldering, and were surprised by the number of people there.

We’re not the only ones, you see, who enjoy a bit of Virginia beauty.

From our Atlantic Coast to our Western mountains, people from around the nation come to Virginia to see things. It may be nature and beauty, or history like Mount Vernon or Monticello. Perhaps visit some wineries or do some family farm agritourism. They come to shop, eat, play, and most importantly, spend.

We got our first National Park in 1926 with the establishment of Shenandoah. The National Park Service estimates that in 2012, 23.4 million people came to Virginia to visit our parks. Those people spent tons of money.  And that doesn’t count visits to our State Parks.

Virginia State Parks got started with six parks in 1936, and now boasts 40 from one end of our Commonwealth to the other. You can visit seashores, estuaries, rivers, streams, valleys, caves, mountains, lakes, and more – and all in our State Parks. Last year, according to our Virginia State Park friends on Twitter, (because we asked!) people spent $206 Million directly related to visits at our State Parks.

All told, people stopping by to visit us in Virginia accounted for over $100 Billion in spending. With a Capital “B.” That supported over 210,000 jobs and kicked in over $1.3 Billion in tax revenue. That’s another Capital “B.”

Not only does keeping Virginia beautiful provide us with a fantastic place to live, work, and play, it makes sound economic sense. And it doesn’t get much better than that.