A Family Tradition

The Hern family has made decades of memories in West Virginia State Parks.

When Russ Hern was old enough for his mother to trust him to go off on his own, he’d ride his bike two miles from his home to Cedar Creek State Park. That’s where the playground was, where Russ and his siblings liked to jump on the metal merry-go-round and hang onto the bars for dear life as the centrifugal force threatened to fling them off.

Russ and his family lived so close to Cedar Creek that the state park became the backdrop for many childhood adventures. When his dad had a day off from the mines and his mom wanted to get out of the house, they’d head to a shaded section of woods in Cedar Creek and have a picnic. It’s where Russ liked to fish and, when he turned 16, it’s where he got his first job, manning the putt putt golf course. “I just assumed everyone grew up in a state park,” he says.

He eventually left his Gilmer County home to study computer science at West Virginia University Institute of Technology. Russ returned to Cedar Creek State Park each summer, earning extra cash as a lifeguard at the park’s pool. That’s where he courted a dark-haired, darkeyed girl named Deb.

On the day they were married, Russ and Deb chose Pipestem Resort State Park as the first stop on their honeymoon, another pin on the couple’s state park map. Little did they know what that map had in store for them.

Bears, Otters, Mud, and Memories

The Herns weren’t much for beach vacations or Walt Disney World. A West Virginia state park—any of them—is where they liked to go. Russ and Deb started taking their kids Amanda, Hannah, and Tyler to state parks in the ’80s, when they were all practically babies, staying in cabins throughout the state.

Eventually, the family discovered the Very Important Parks Person (VIPP) program. Like earning frequent flyer miles, the VIPP program requires participants to visit 15 mandatory state parks and five additional parks
of their choosing before becoming an official VIPP member. There is a special stamp at each park to mark on your VIPP card, to show where you’ve been.

The Herns were hooked. “We’re kind of competitive anyhow,” Russ says. “When we got that card, it was a big deal. It was kind of a challenge.”

The family came up with a plan of attack, scouting out the most efficient path to get the parks they needed. The kids helped plan their trips. Amanda studied the state parks map and each park’s description so closely, she made state park trading cards using Microsoft Paint on her parents’ old computer, choosing symbols to represent each park and writing descriptions on the back of each card.

As the family crisscrossed the state collecting stamps, Amanda’s knowledge of state park geography and history grew and grew. She credits her VIPP days for helping her to earn a Golden Horseshoe pin in eighth grade.

With time, the Herns developed a masterful camping approach. In the summertime, when the kids were out of school, Deb would pack up the van and take off early from their home in Ravenswood in hopes of arriving early enough to have their pick of campsites. Russ would stay behind to finish his work week before joining his family on Friday evenings.

Like collecting VIPP stamps, tracking down and staking their claim to a prime campsite became a game for the Herns. They wanted to find a shaded spot close to some body of water they could play in, but far enough away from other campers that they could feel like they were alone—and yet still close enough to the bath house for midnight trips.

Once they’d found the perfect site, Amanda, Tyler, and Hannah would help their mom set up the family’s 12-foot-round dome tent and prepare camp as they waited on their dad to come. Conditions weren’t always perfect, of course. The rain had a way of finding the Herns.

Once, at North Bend State Park, Deb could see it coming as the sky grew dark. After everything it had taken to get her kids and all of their supplies into “Bessie,” the family’s blue Ford conversion van, there was no way she was going to unpack just to watch their things get rained on. Amanda remembers her mom telling them to play nice. They would set up camp after the rain passed. In the meantime, Deb was going to lie down in the van and take a quick nap. “Mom, bless her heart, she was already exhausted from packing,” Amanda says.

“Go ahead. We’ll stay here,” Amanda, the oldest, recalls telling her mom. “We won’t ride our bikes. We won’t get anything out. We’ll just stay here, talk nicely, look at each other.” Deb fell asleep in the van. For a while, the kids kept their promise. And, as predicted, the skies opened up and the rain began to fall. “The three of us are loving it because we’re soaked to the bone,” Amanda remembers.

But then someone bumped someone else, the kind of sibling touch that instantly means war. Tensions rose. They began looking for ammunition, something to throw at one another. And they found it, lying all over the ground—fresh, goopy mud.

Amanda is in her 30s now. Hannah and Tyler are, too. But the joy of that day at North Bend—with no parent supervision, sinking her hands into the earth, blasting her siblings in an all-out mud battle—is still fresh decades later when she recalls the scene.

All the Hern kids have state park stories like Amanda’s mud battle. Hannah saw an otter for the first time while floating down the Greenbrier River at Watoga State Park. She was so scared it was going to swim around her legs that she jumped onto the pool raft she and Amanda had been hanging onto and screamed for her big sister to kick her ashore.

They also laugh about the time Deb woke up at Blackwater Falls’ campground to the sound of a black bear munching on crabapples just feet away from their tent. That was the last time she ever slept in a tent. From then on, she and the girls would use Bessie’s bench seat as their bed.

To this day, Tyler’s favorite park remains Holly River, because that’s one of the first places he ever went trout fishing with his dad. When Ravenswood was blistering hot, it didn’t get any better than wading into a shaded mountain stream at Holly River with his dad by his side. Those fishing experiences also shaped Tyler’s eventual career—he’s now a fish biologist at the White Sulphur Springs National Fish Hatchery.

No one can remember the exact day the Herns completed their VIPP challenge. It doesn’t seem to matter, because it was never the challenge that kept them coming back to state parks: It was looking for crawdads in a stream or riding bikes around the campground, or huddling together in that dome tent when rain forced them inside, with Deb and Russ making up games to play.

They could have taken other vacations, gone out of the state, but everyone liked what they were doing, Russ says. When the end of the school year neared and discussion started to swirl in their house around where to go that summer, it wasn’t “Do you want to go to Myrtle or Daytona Beach?” No. The questions were: “Is it Twin Falls? Is it Pipestem? Is it Cacapon?”

Family Reunion

Deb and Russ still live in Ravenswood, as does Hannah, her husband Scott, and their new baby Ava. But Amanda lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, Matt, and their two kids, Holly and Daniel. And Tyler’s down in White Sulphur Springs with his fiance, working with fish.

There are only a couple times each year that Deb can count on everyone getting together—Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the annual VIPP weekend. It wasn’t until six years ago the family decided to attend the VIPP weekend, which is held at a different state park each year.

Ever since their kids hit high school, the camping trips have taken a steep decline, but now, thanks to the VIPP program, they have one to count on.

Because they’ve been to almost every one of West Virginia’s 37 state parks, it doesn‘t matter where the VIPP weekend is held—old memories are sure to greet them wherever they go. And they still make new memories every year. Scott asked Hannah to marry him during a VIPP weekend. Amanda’s oldest, Holly, took her first ride on a paddleboat with Deb and Russ last year. The Herns get into the planned activities at VIPP weekends—they always were an active bunch—but what Deb loves most is the time spent just sitting together and talking, maybe rocking a grandbaby in her arms.

Each VIPP weekend culminates with a picnic. At the end, they announce where the next year’s weekend will be held. Russ is always ready, cell phone in hand. As soon as he hears the location, he’s up out of his seat, dialing the park’s number, hoping to be the first one to call.

It’s just like the old days, searching for and staking out the perfect campsite. Russ needs to book the park’s biggest cabin for his clan of park-loving people, and he wants everyone to put the date on their calendars as soon
as possible.

“OK, here it is,” he tells them, hanging up the phone. “This is the weekend. Everybody is invited.”

written by Anna Patrick
photographs courtesy of the Hern family