The Program
How Do I Start?
TRACK Trail Adventures can be downloaded from the TRACK Trails link or simply picked up at the trailhead. Once you complete a TRACK Trail, log back on to our website and tell us about your adventure. By answering a few questions about your experiece, you can join the Trail TRACKer Team and earn valuable prizes that will help you explore nature and become a better Trail TRACKer.
The first TRACK Trail, with four different self-guided adventures, officially opened August 29th, 2009 at the Blue Ridge Parkway Visitor's Center - Milepost 384. Since then, we have opened five more TRACK Trails and a Nature Trail Disc Golf Course in gateway communities along the Parkway. Plans are underway to expand the TRACK Trail program all along the Blue Ridge Parkway and within communities surrounding the Blue Ridge Parkway. Visit this webpage often to find information about the newest TRACK Trail adventure available near you.
About The Program
The TRACK Trail program is part of the larger Kids in Parks Initiative sponsored by the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation. Working together with partners throughout the community, our mission is to increase physical activity of children and their families, to improve nutritional choices, and to get kids outdoors and along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
TRACK Trail adventures are designed to help kids explore nature through the use of self-guided brochures. TRACK Trail adventures are fun, healthy and free. Within the pages of each brochure a different story unfolds. From Nature's Relationships to Fern Identification, each adventure will help you connect with your natural world.
The Problem
There is mounting pressure on our time, pocketbook and physical condition. Park visitation has decreased, our waistlines have increased and our resources to deal with either have dwindled. Our children's preferred setting to play is inside, "where all the electrical outlets are", as one child said.
What may be missing in our health, the health of our economy and the health of our parks is a connection to the place we play and how we play. North Carolina has the fifth highest rate of obese children in the country, and nearly 23% of all children surveyed got no physical activity in their leisure time at all. Children spend about 7.5 hours a day interacting with media, and the most common vegetable they consume is French Fries. Clearly, nutritional and recreational choices are having a detrimental and devastating impact on our youth
The Solution
The Kids in Parks' TRACK Trails program supports and enables a life change, not an exercise program. Our project focuses on modifying existing resources to increase engagement and activity in the communities found along the Blue Ridge Parkway. In this case, the existing resource is our local parks and trails. We will make families more aware of the opportunities available along the Blue Ridge Parkway and surrounding communities for outdoor recreation. We provide activities with educational and inspirational reasons to stay local, become more active and get connected to their community. This exposure will result in a closer bond with nature, transformational learning and new experiences with our local natural and cultural resources.
Phase I of this project was funded through a grant by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation of North Carolina. Phase I supports the original design of the pilot program and its implementation in and along the trails of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The first program launched within Kids in Parks were our TRACK (Trails Ridges and Active Caring Kids) Trails. TRACK Trails are designed to make hiking and walking more attractive to kids and families in order to increase physical activity and connection to the cultural heritage and natural resources of our local communities. The TRACK program will provide multi-media led discoveries for children and families utilizing kiosks, TRACK Packs, interpretive brochures, and web based strategies to keep today's kids engaged more often and more meaningfully in outdoor recreation.
Dora the Explorer meets Geo-Caching is the overall approach of the TRACK program. Families will find adventure and fun as they go on their own self-guided discovery along each TRACK Trail. The adventures could be downloaded from our web site or picked up in brochure form at the trailhead itself. Each trail has multiple thematic adventures that visitors can experience. One family member may be reading about Nature's Relationships while another is following illustrations and clues as they search for Ferns. TRACK trail adventures will be grouped around three topic areas: plants, animals and culture.
The TRACK Trails program will be superimposed on existing trail systems and include numerous adventures for visitors to experience; thus, maximizing the educational and recreational value of each singular trail. Adventures will be designed and created in consultation with local groups. Motivational 'rewards' for participation will be provided through registration on the web page. In this manner, not only will participants be motivated to experience the first trail, they will be prompted to either return or visit another TRACK Trail segment in order to achieve the next reward. There will be levels of achievement with associated 'rewards' or incentives for kids.
The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation's Kids in Parks Program is dedicated to protecting and preserving the Blue Ridge Parkway through building and supporting community connections to the people and the places that make the Blue Ridge Parkway and communities in and along the Parkway a special and important natural, cultural and economic resource. One key aspect of building that connection is through the next generation of stewards... the children. Working in cooperation with partners throughout the community, we want to foster a life-long relationship between kids and nature. It is through a meaningful personal connection with natural and cultural resources that lasting positive impacts can be achieved both for the children and the resource.
Blue Ridge Parkway
The Blue Ridge Parkway is an uninterrupted ribbon of road stretched across the tops of the Southern Appalachian Mountains connecting Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee. As the most visited unit in the National Park Service, with an estimated 16 million visitors each year, the Parkway is more than just a road, it's a journey. The Parkway offers 469 miles of uninterrupted scenic road, with over 200 overlooks, countless vistas, and approximately 350 miles of hiking trails to help you get connected to the magnificent Blue Ridge Mountains. For more information about the Blue Ridge Parkway, please visit their website.
About the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation
The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation is a comprehensive and independent protector of the Parkway, providing critical support beyond federal budgets to assure that the traditions and beauty of the Blue Ridge Parkway can be forever realized and shared. The Kids in Parks and TRACK Trail programs are just one of the many projects funded in part by the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation. For more information about the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, log onto their website at: www.brpfoundation.org.
The Advisory Board
Olson Huff, MD
Board Chair
Steve Covert
Treasurer
Susan Tumbleston, MBA, RN
Director -
Be Active-Appalachian Partnership
Alice Ammerman, DrPH, RD
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dept. of Nutrition, Center for HPDP
Mr. George Briggs
Executive Director - North Carolina Arboretum
Ms. Emily Jackson
Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project
Ms. Jennifer Z. MacDougall
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation
Program Manager - Healthy Active Communities
Dr. Susan Mims
Mission Children's Hospital
David Gardner, DA
Director - NC Center for Health and Wellness
Robert P. Schwartz, MD
Professor, Section Head, Pediatric Endocrinology
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Neftali Fernandez, MD
Cherokee Indian Hospital
- Robin C. Moore and Herb H. Wong
- Wendell Berry
