Lessons from My Family’s Trail Quest Odyssey: Growing Up in Virginia’s State Parks
By Jessie Purtell
In 2015, before we had kids, my husband and I set off on what we thought was a straightforward challenge: visit every single Virginia State Park and complete the Trail Quest program. Unburdened by nap schedules, diaper bags, or snack rations, we logged parks quickly. Without backseat passengers, casual day trip drives to remote state parks were opportunities to have deep, engaging conversations. Pushing our physical limits across sweeping landscapes felt boundless and thrilling.
Then our first daughter arrived in 2018—and like any true epic, our path took an unexpected turn. We decided we wanted to complete the program with her, so we hit reset on our Trail Quest.
Then, when our second daughter arrived in 2020, we hit reset again.
Much like the journey of parenthood, our Trail Quest became our very own odyssey—a long, winding voyage defined not by swift victory, but by slow miles, failed attempts, disappointments, early turnarounds, and complete restarts. We knew we didn’t want to rush through Virginia’s wilderness just to check boxes on a map. We wanted to anchor ourselves in each place, give every park the time it deserved, connect with the local community, and immerse ourselves by camping or staying in cabins whenever possible.
When we finally completed the program in 2024, nearly a decade after our first attempt, our daughters were 4 and 6. They had literally grown up on Virginia’s trails—evolving from infants carried close in chest wraps, to unsteady toddlers alternating between hiking carriers and taking their first wobbling steps, to confident little hikers leaping over logs and tackling real inclines. But the kids weren't the only ones who were growing up. As parents, we were evolving too: shedding our rigid expectations, learning humility, and discovering how to find joy in the small, slow moments.
The Evolution of the Parent as an Adventurer
Every great odyssey demands that the travelers adapt to the road, rather than expecting the road to adapt to them. Early on, our biggest obstacle was our own pre-kids mindset.
Before children, hiking was almost exclusively about pushing through the hard stuff. Success meant ignoring the aches, breathing through the burn, and dealing with the physical recovery by crashing afterward. That was the grit-your-teeth mentality we carried into our early family adventures—until we learned that hiking with kids isn't something you can just force your way through.
We had to learn to let our kids set the intensity. Young kids don't understand the adult concept of pushing through a brutal climb for the payoff of a sweet view at the end, and that's okay. We had to stop and ask ourselves the most basic question: why are we doing this in the first place? It's supposed to be fun. The great thing about hiking with kids is that they force you to slow down so that hiking stops being about the achievement of a physical challenge and becomes entirely about the challenge of finding the fun in doing hard things.
We also had to learn to listen to our own bodies. While before kids, we could grab a pizza and crash on the couch after a strenuous hike, we quickly learned how unsustainable it is to parent when you are completely physically exhausted and sore. Not only did we need to adjust our approach to hiking to accommodate our kids, we now needed to pay attention to our own previously ignored needs in order to survive parenthood.
That shift didn't happen the moment we became parents—it happened on the trails of Virginia State Parks. When our oldest was just five weeks old and we were ready to get back on the trails, we packed up our newborn and headed to Pocahontas State Park. Leaning on old habits, we had no real plan and decided to "wing it" on Beaver Lake Trail with a jogging stroller. What we envisioned as a gentle stroll turned into a three-hour, intensely bumpy, past-everyone’s-limit ordeal.
Two months later, still in our pre-kids mindset, we stayed at Douthat State Park and took on the challenge of hiking Blue Suck Falls after a heavy rain. Carrying a three-month-old up a slick, partially washed-out trail was a sobering lesson in risk tolerance, safety, and humility. But standing together at the roaring waterfall at the end of the hike with only a few tears behind us was a pivotal relief. Adventure could still be a part of our family’s story, but we as adults needed to mature. Continuing on this journey would require unprecedented levels of preparation, lowered expectations, and radical flexibility.
By the time our second daughter was born, our idea of a "successful" expedition had transformed completely.
On a trip to Hungry Mother State Park, we set out to hike Molly’s Knob—a 3.6-mile trail with a steep, strenuous climb to the peak. This time, we were prepared. Before the hike even began, we had the girls make "magic wands" out of sticks and ribbons. We loaded our pockets with candy lures. But five minutes into the hike, both the candy and the wands lost their magic and the mood disintegrated. Pre-kids, turning around five minutes into a hike would have felt like a crushing failure. Instead, we called those five minutes of strenuous uphill climbing a triumph, turned around, and enjoyed the nature center instead.
Our experience doing the Virginia State Parks Trail Quest certainly wasn't an odyssey where we conquered every summit—it was a journey defined by the joy, grace, and resilience we discovered along the way.
Grayson Highlands: A Tale of Two Voyages
Nothing illustrated our family’s transformation quite like our return to Grayson Highlands.
Our first voyage there in 2016 was a multi-day backpacking trek with friends. We logged heavy miles across wide-open balds, carried everything on our backs, slept under a blanket of mountain stars on Mount Rogers, and slept in until our bodies felt ready. It was exhilarating, independent freedom.
When we returned as parents in 2023, the expedition looked entirely different. It was a short day hike carefully calibrated to little legs, weighed down by snacks and extra layers, and bounded by afternoon nap windows.
Yet, as we crested the ridge and encountered the wild ponies, I realized that the magic of hiking isn’t about the mileage. Seeing the horses as an unburdened backpacker in 2016 was breathtaking, but witnessing them through the wide, wonder-filled eyes of my daughters in 2023 was transformative. Sharing in their absolute awe turned what could have felt like an "easy" hike into one of the most powerful milestones of our entire journey.
Remote Frontiers and Small-Town Treasures
After visiting 44 Virginia State Parks with our kids, people always want to know what was our favorite park. But comparing the wild diversity of Virginia feels like comparing different worlds entirely. How do you weigh the rugged, mist-shrouded peaks of Douthat against the windswept, coastal solitude of False Cape?
For the kids, the undisputed crown went to Natural Tunnel State Park, with its chairlifts, front-row views of rumbling freight trains, a 10/10 rock-hopping creek, and impressive geological features.
Douthat State Park also holds a sacred place in our family lore as the site of our early watershed moment at Blue Suck Falls, its swinging bridge, and the peaceful, kid-friendly beach where our daughters took some of their earliest swims.
The most logistically daunting legs of our odyssey ended up yielding the richest rewards. Southwest Virginia’s far-flung parks—including Grayson Highlands, Clinch River, Hungry Mother, Natural Tunnel, Southwest Virginia Museum, Wilderness Road, and neighboring Breaks Interstate Park (which we made a point to cross off our personal bucket list)—required multiple long-distance journeys. Likewise, reaching False Cape meant navigating miles of hiking, biking, or a four-hour trolley trek.
Yet, those long hauls anchored us to parts of the state we never would have experienced otherwise. We made it a point to slow down, explore, connect with the community, and support small local businesses in every gateway town we passed through. It taught our daughters a priceless lesson: that life-changing adventures don't require expensive plane tickets or distant destinations. In the end, our odyssey taught us that home isn't just where you live—it's the land you explore together, the joy you find in every slow step, and the quiet magic waiting in a happy spot just down the road.
