Buried Treasure
Geocaching is probably a new word to most of you. It is high-tech treasure hunting using a GPS device. Last Thursday four of us women from Anamoose-Phyllis Peiler, Mardi Helm, Janice Buchholz & I-wandered the grounds of the Red Willow Bible Camp near Binford with our GPS devices hunting for hidden treasure. What fun to find an ice cream pail with odds & ends where you can take one item, but then need to leave something in exchange. geocaching.com is a web site to find out more. Last week there were 857,590 sites throughout the world.
This was just one portion of the day long Profit from the Prairie Tourism conference. We learned about touring the National Scenic Byways, Mosasaur & Dinosaur Digs, tourism opportunities to capture wealth & people, & culinary & agricultural tourism opportunities in ND. Tourism is the second largest industry in ND next to agriculture. It brings in 3.96 billion dollars a year. For every $1 spent on tourism, we get $123 back. Triple A calls ND the most affordable state, and we are called the most friendly.
Mike Shaw, a “kite addict” gave a presentation on making & flying kites. He said he capitalizes on the wind that we complain about. His largest kite sells for $5-7,000. Mary Ann & Jim Miller make Prairie Bilt Dog sleds & sell them all over the world.
Sue Balsam, Dept of Agriculture, stated that one third of our travel budget is spent on food. 44% of travelers want unusual & different tours. There are tours to farms where you “feed it, pick it, cook it & eat it”. Farmers Markets are being promoted that include food, recipes, events, fun & festivals. We should be promoting our cultural, ethnic foods. I am Scandanavian, but I am outnumbered by Germans here in the Anamoose area. So guess we should be promoting knepfla, sausage, sauerkraut, potato dishes, etc rather than lutefisk & lefse.
I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the little boy shown after he saw his first baby calf. He is so cute!
