TAHQUAMENON FALLS -- Tahquamenon Falls State Park gets over 400,000 visitors a year, and 25 percent of them are from out of state.

The Blue-Ribbon Panel for State Parks is meeting to try to make sure all Michigan state parks have those kinds of numbers. They're trying to figure out what social, economic, and natural resource values make a park successful and use that as a tool for what's to come.

"Tahquamenon Falls is just a one of a kind. It is an amazing, beautiful feature surrounded by all of these great opportunities, and it really draws people here. When you look at the statistics for the park users and you look at all this great staff that's up here working on it, you get a ton of people from all over the world," said panel member Erin McDonough.

Increasing physical activity in parks was one of the main concerns of the group.

One of the topics the panel discussed Monday was how to utilize pathways and trails throughout the state in order to improve and increase recreational activity.

"What we want to do is make sure we're looking forward. We've had a great park system started almost 100 years ago, but we want to think about what it is and could be 100 years from now. So we want to help create that compelling vision for the future," said panel member Jon Allan.

The panel is drafting recommendations for future parks and sending them to Governor Snyder by the end of September.