Chewacla State Park, a hub for outdoors fans in Auburn, is among 11 Alabama State Parks that have been awarded the 2016 Certificate of Excellence from TripAdvisor, a travel website featuring traveler-generated content and reviews.
“We wouldn’t have won this award without all of the hard work all of our employees put in here at the park,” said Chewacla park manager O’Dell Banks.
The award celebrates establishments that provide excellent guest experiences and consistently achieve positive reviews on tripadvisor.com
Chewacla is known for camping, hiking, bike riding and even family picnics. However, Banks said now during the summer, the trails have been the most popular.
“A majority of the park attendance this summer has been the influx of new trails we have added,” Banks said.
The Central Alabama Mountain Peddlers have put in a lot of time and effort to expand the trails from six miles before 2012 to now 24 miles, according to their website.
“It's a group of very dedicated volunteers willing to dedicate lots of their time to make this dream a reality,” said CAMP President Philip Darden.
The CAMP website also shows that park attendance has grown from 43,567 people in 2010-2011 to 75,823 in 2013-2014.
Darden mentioned that they have just received a grant to add more trails to the park. It will be more difficult bike trails.
“We have about 100 members,” Darden said. “Out of those 100, we get about half that come out to work for the day. About 30 to 40 come out on a regular basis.”
All of the previous grants CAMP has received have allowed them to build about six miles of trail. They hire a third-party sometimes to help out with the trail building process.
The additional 12 miles was completed by the volunteers at CAMP.
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