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Strategies & Market Trends : Fascist Oligarchs Attack Cute Cuddly Canadians -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Charters who wrote (841)	11/29/2002 9:39:25 AM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1293

Noticed an absence of all tourists in Nova Scotia this year. Most striking was how quiet it was around Digby and on the whale-watching boats. When I was out there in late July, the boats were going out half empty (or less) of passengers. Quite a contrast from where things were a couple of years back. Not just Murikans absent though.. people from all over. As far as summer vacationers, I think a lot had to do with either nervousness about flying, or fatigue from events of the past year -- and the economy too... I had a friend over from Netherlands for most of the summer to do some tripping around with me. Almost everyone back at home thought she was totally NUTS to take a chance flying to NA. A couple of them had trips planned to go to BC this summer and they canned everything as they didn't want to be in NA. Perception was that it was "risky" here right now. Does look like the average family of Murikan tourists are also largely absent at all the usual tourist venues this side of TO... Old Fort Henry, Upper Canada Village, etc.. Did see quite a few doing their travel-trailer or RV thing in the larger provincial parks when I happened to have dropped by those places. Mostly, I run across Murikans out on the lakes and rivers. Odd recent phenomenon, and that is to go to what formerly seemed to be a relatively unknown lake and find an enclave of 4x4s hauling boat trailers and all bearing licence plates from the same state. Seem to be gangs of guys tripping around together with their boats to fish the lakes up here. One recent trip onto one of my favourite small lakes where there are unusual rock formations, the section of road around the access point was clogged up with a bunch of trucks with Michigan licence plates. It's a narrow winding road with very little parking, so they had taken every stretch that was safe to park. I ended up having to park up over a hill and portage my canoe down to the put-in. I figure that a bunch of these fisherman must be on the net telling each other about certain lakes and that they come up here and "do" the lakes. No other way that I can see that people from as far away as Michigan could know much about some of these little lakes that haven't been too heavily fished in the past. Undoubtedly, it will go the way it has on the more well-known lakes where overfishing has pretty much killed things. I agree about the "wild experiences" biz. One that I've noticed that seems in serious decline is white water rafting up on the Ottawa and Madawaska, etc... Don't know what's going on, but I don't hear much about it these days. May have been a fad for awhile. Seems that about 10 years ago, everyone and his dog was rafting on the Ottawa, but I can't say I've heard anyone mention doing that for a long while now. Most are still in biz, but the paint is falling off their signs, so one wonder for how much longer. Kayaking and canoeing is still popular around here though..both whitewater and wilderness tripping. Still a lot of paddlers from Canada and US paddling the rivers and lakes all around eastern side of Ontario and up into PQ. A lot finding it crowded in Algonquin and that they can't get camping sites in Killarney, Quetico, etc... unless they reserve well ahead..as in months or the season before. Seem to be a lot more people tripping up north these days (Nahanni, etc..). In fact, there seems to be an epidemic of that these days. One interesting thing is that there is an outfit that does wild women adventures out of an area around the Spanish. They seem to be booked right through into next year. All-taken-care-of adventure packages. Seems like that is very popular these days. I know it would be with the Euro-tourists as that's what most of my friends in Europe seem to be into. They want to get out in the bush, but they don't know how to do it and need someone to enable them. I've taken a few Europeans out tripping with me and they are totally in awe of the Canadian outdoors..and I'm not referring to anything that even comes close to what I think of as "wilderness". None had ever paddled on rivers like the ones I go to where you don't see a soul all day. They said that back home, if you went paddling anywhere, you'd be sharing the river with a few dozen paddlers just in one section. (yuck). A bit curious about what you say about the "moron-run lodges". I guess that what I've noticed is that there seems to be no "in-between" lodges. You either have rinky-dink 10x12 cabins all jammed together on some lake, or you have the odd big lodge somewhere. Not much in-between. Motels in many of the towns seem to have gone under. Some rather pathetic abandoned ones on 7 around Kaladar. I suspect that people are looking for something decent-to-nice, or at least a lot better than the usual run-of-the-mill cabin with cheap wood panelling, a toilet that runs all night, a rusty shower stall, and a stove with only one working burner. Anyhow, what's the missing ingredient here? Disagree somewhat about the waterways being all polluted and so on. Yep, there are Zebras down below the Shield as they favour calcareous rivers, but once you're up onto the granite, they kind of peter out. Don't think I've ever seen them in the Mississippi much upstream of Carleton Place. I paddle mostly up on the shield, and I tend to go to smaller lakes and rivers that take a bit more scouting to find, so I run into few other paddlers and the water is usually great. Biggest problem with most of the main waterways is industrials and agricultural effluent though... I can agree with you on that. All kinds of delightful stuff flowing into the rivers up here and down in the U.S. The growth in the sewage sludge and septage spreading industry down south and now up here makes me mighty wary of paddling in certain areas. An aside: Well, you can tell it's snowing and blowing here. I've barely posted on S.I. all summer, and now have posted about a dozen times in the past week including this long treatise. Arrrggghhh!!! Gimme summer and hand me my paddle!! On a Canadian paddling forum where I occasionally post, some of the threads that have just been started in the past few days are: 1.) Identify this: A posted photo of some kind of scat and about 40 replies guessing and arguing over whether it was bear or coyote scat. 2.) A debate about another universe where you could either choose to have no wind, or no portages. Lots of disagreement over which would be better or worse. I say "no powerboats" would be much better than either of the above. 3.) Christmas wish lists for paddlers. 4.) Which boots are best for wearing with your snowshoes. 5.) Which model of the Prospector is most true to the old Chestnut version... yadda yadda yadda... Lots of trip route discussions going on too. Most of us are already getting antsy and it's only been a couple of weeks since the canoe got stowed away. Hmmph!!! Whew, wind picking up here. Just watching a red squirrel that is about as far away as my arm can reach, being blown out of the birdfeeder against the window by my desk. Batten down them hatches, boyz, looks to me that today's gonna be a bad un.