Droves of families gathered at Fort Vancouver National Site on Saturday to continue a lively local tradition of celebrating the great outdoors.
Saturday marked the nation’s eighth annual Get Outdoors Day. Since the event’s inception June 14, 2008, Vancouver has hosted one of the largest G.O. Day festivals in the country, with about 5,000 people attending each year.
This year, families celebrated between Pearson Air Museum and Fort Vancouver with a wide range of festivities. Parks staff led guided history tours around the fort. Energetic kids took turns scaling a rock wall, dancing, learning how to properly throw axes, shooting arrows, and fishing for trout in a makeshift pond.
State and federal parks workers and nonprofit groups lined the streets with booths to teach kids about outdoor recreation and what wild forests, refuges and parks have to offer.