Posts Tagged ‘Travel-Tourism’
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Starting this spring, paddlers will be able to travel down the Hudson River from Newcomb and take out on lands newly acquired by the state.
The takeout will be at an iron bridge just downstream from the confluence with the Goodnow River, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. From the town beach in Newcomb it’s roughly seven miles to the mouth of the Goodnow.
The stretch includes several mild rapids. The significance of the takeout is that it will open the Hudson to paddlers who don’t have the skills or inclination to continue downriver through the heavy whitewater of the Hudson Gorge. » Continue Reading.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Like all who know and love the Adirondacks I have always felt a personal stake in the grand debate over private versus public land and the extent to which the state of New York should support and expand its wilderness holdings. It’s no secret I firmly believe that the Adirondacks’ greatest asset is its mountainous wilderness character and that increasing this asset and leveraging the image of the Adirondacks as a wild place holds the key to gaining its best economic future.
Plenty of people disagree with me. So I laid out my arguments in great detail in a series of Dispatches running from October through November of last year that promoted what I called a wild, mountainous Adirondack Image. All told these Dispatches engendered more than a hundred and seventy comments, which is a wonderful. Meanwhile the same debate raged on in columns ranging from the State’s acquisitions of the Nature Conservancy offering to tourism, Adirondack branding and others. As I read various postings and comments I found myself thinking all too often that people still don’t get it, that so many of the viewpoints are myopic, embracing a very narrow focus at the expense of the bigger picture. » Continue Reading.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
The Adirondack Park is more than double the size of Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks combined, but its greatness is not always apparent. Silver lakes and dark woods beckon from some roadsides, while lawns and driveways interrupt the wild scenery from others. With its mix of private and public land, the Adirondacks have always had something of an identity problem.
Four decades after the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) was created to oversee development on private lands, the Park is still in search of a coherent look. Brown road signs with yellow lettering suggest to visitors they are in a special place. But are signs enough?
“The Adirondacks mean nothing if you don’t know you’re in a park,” said George Davis, who led the state’s Commission on the Adirondacks in the Twenty-First Century in 1990. “Where else do you have six million acres of [largely] forested land? Not this side of Minnesota.” The commission proposed a series of recommendations to make the Adirondacks more park-like, including establishing an Adirondack Park Administration to oversee planning of both private and public lands and an Adirondack Park Service that would manage the public lands. » Continue Reading.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
So, I opened up a can of comments after my last post, “The Sustainable Tourism Equation.”
In that post, I attempted to convey the indisputable fact that in order for Adirondack communities to benefit economically from any increased tourism activity (resulting from increased marketing), those communities have to have cash registers in place to collect the money. If there’s no place to buy anything in a town (retail, restaurant, attraction, lodging), the visitors can’t contribute to the economy there. In other words, marketing is just part of the overall equation.
» Continue Reading.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
The Adirondack region has a long and storied history of mysterious phenomenon. From the numerous haunted hotels, frequent unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings, a breeding mountain lion population and an unending horde of black flies, the Adirondacks have its share of paranormal curiosities. One of the most interesting and beloved of these is Bigfoot, the large, hairy hominid, with enormous feet that allegedly lurks within many of the most remote areas of North America and beyond.
Unfortunately, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) recently played the Grinch just in time for Christmas, stealing this beloved beast from the entire state when they officially designated Bigfoot a figment of the imagination. Instead, they should be looking at this as an opportunity to generate some economic activity in an area of the State where it is needed most.
» Continue Reading.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
At times, it seems as if the entire world is going digital. The Digital Revolution is in full swing, ubiquitously deploying its combined forces of computers, tablets, smart phones, Internet, Wi-Fi, etc., penetrating every aspect of our modern lives. Its newest weaponry, Facebook, Twitter and numerous other social media websites continually distract us from the real world, whiling away the moments of our lives.
Luckily, there are still a few refuges from the constant information bombardment of the 21st Century. The Adirondack backcountry is one such place, where the Information Age has only a small footprint in the form of handheld GPS, an intermittently functioning cellphone or a personal locator beacon. Here the backcountry exists much as it did long before digital gadgetry took up arms against our sanity.
Unfortunately, this may not last for long though. That is, not if Google Trekker and its co-conspirators have anything to say about it.
» Continue Reading.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
The bottom line: we can market the heck out of Childwold, N.Y. as a tourism destination, but the visitors will stay in Lake Placid anyway.
Marketing alone is not the solution to the sustainable tourism problem.
In a recent post by NCPR’s Brian Mann, he revisits the idea that there is a lack of a coordinated tourism marketing effort for the Adirondacks. He cites the “balkanization” of the region, “with no central governing organization to shape how and where dollars are spent”.
He’s right. » Continue Reading.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
I have been in the middle of a series of arguments for building the Adirondack economy by promoting the region as a premier wilderness destination, something it is not widely known as now. A wild Adirondack Image will resonate in a much different way than current conceptions of the region bring to mind. It will become more unique, more valuable and more appropriate for answering the large and growing national demand for wild places.
The first two strategies of my five point economic proposal argued that a wild Adirondack Image can be a powerful tool in promoting wilderness tourism and recreation. Now I will move onto three additional strategies for leveraging a wild Adirondacks
» Continue Reading.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Last week I ended my Dispatch on the Adirondack economy by suggesting the outlines of a five-point economic proposal. This proposal is based upon that idea that the most valuable Adirondack asset that can be leveraged is wilderness itself.
This week I will briefly describe core of the proposal, the creation of a new Adirondack image as a mountainous wilderness area second to none. » Continue Reading.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Last week’s Dispatch provoked a healthy discussion in the comments section. The readers of the Almanack proved once again to be light years ahead of your average blog trollers by being thoughtful and respectful. My arguments about economic reality in the park and elitism in the question of land use were not met with a single angry or accusatory response, but rather thoughtful commentary. So thanks to all.
In fact, I was a little surprised to see that my economic argument was left virtually unchallenged. Instead the discussion followed the common theme over whether there is enough wilderness in the Adirondacks, but along two lines so as to apparently dismiss the claim that a local perspective is elitist. The first line was to question the value of wilderness in the first place (as I strictly defined it for the purposes of this argument). Is an area of untrammeled Adirondack wilderness really that valuable to anyone, much less someone leagues away living in Cleveland? The second line was to argue over usage, both locally and from a national perspective: who uses Adirondack wilderness and how much? » Continue Reading.
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Starting this spring, paddlers will be able to travel down the Hudson River from Newcomb and take out on lands newly acquired by the state.
Recent Almanack Comments