Lark and New York don’t rhyme, and somehow that’s really annoying.
People from Massachusetts, and the Bushes.
I should have given proper credit:
Inspired by this thread, I took a google towards http://www.ndtourism.com/
You can shoot, or fish, or gamble, or, ummm…
Seattle: Go Home You Damn Irritating Tourists!
Well ok that’s my own personal cranky motto…
I see quite a few Las Vegas promos here in the Great Northwest. “What happens here stays here”. I have also seen ads for California, the Oregon Coast and Montana. Yeah, Big Sky Country. Cuz there’s nothing else to look at.
Northern Virginia: Pretty Close to D.C.
Rabid Stephen King fans?
I assume then, that you don’t live near the southeast coast, do you? The Wells/York/Ogunquit/Kennebunk region is LOADED with tourists from the end of May to the beginning of September. It’s rather odd that one small portion of a state can dictate how the whole rest of the nation feels about it, and in some cases the state itself does, but not much you can do about it. It’s not jsut limited to Maine, either. How many people not from New York (or Northeast US) hear New York and think of NYC and not much else? Or hear Texas and think Dallas or Houston? Hear California and think LA or San Fransisco?
Vermonters, that’s who. I, myself, have been to the Maine shore several times. It’s a very popular vacation spot with my family and lots of other folks.
I feel you. I always felt that way about my native western Pennsylvania. Tourist brochures for the state and kitschy souvenirs seemed to always focus on the eastern part of the state—Hershey Park, the Amish (in Lancaster!,) and of course Philadelphia. I mean, there are Amish out west in Mercer County (but trust me, they’re really not much of a tourist attraction. They prefer to keep to themselves, I’ve noticed, but if you really want to, try striking up a conversation with them, English.)
Okay, western Pennsylvania doesn’t really have anything to draw tourists in from far off. There are nice parks and the beach at Lake Erie is pleasant (and not so polluted these days,) but there’s nothing to make someone say, “Hey! Let’s get the kids in the car and drive a thousand miles to Wexford! They’ve got a really nice Eat ‘n Park there!”
I like driving off the main roads and seeing ordinary towns and how the people there live. I remember being quite charmed by Denison, Iowa once, just strolling down the streets. There’s not much at all to see there, but it’s a charming town. I guess I don’t care all that much, except that all anyone thinks of when they think of Pennsylvania is the eastern part and the mountains; I’m from the relatively flat western part, and we’re known for nothing, despite the fact that we’ve got loads of decaying old steel mills and… um… some apple trees…
Now that you mention it, I seem to recall revolts from folks who didn’t live on the coast over the lobster on the license plates. They thought it portrayed Maine as an affluent lobster-driven economy, and didn’t give enough exposure to the inland poverty, or some such.* I think there were court cases about whether they could cover the lobster in protest. But I’ll be damned if I can find a cite, so you’ll have to trust me.
- I just am reporting this as I recall it; don’t ask me why they’d expect poverty to be represented on a license plate.
I had a teacher who once loaded up his car with his family, set off, got about five miles out before realizing that he’d just planned a vacation in Nebraska, and turned right around.
Unless one has relatives in those states.
Iowa and Kansas were the only vacations I went on until I was in my 20s.
…Huh? 
I can trump everyone! I recent saw a commercial trying to entice tourists to…
Arkansas.
BLARGH.
What’s that? You’re from Arkansas? It’s a beauitful state full of wonderful people?
BLARGH, all the same. 
He was making what we like to call a “joke.”
Kansas is so big and boring, it seems like it takes weeks to drive across even if in reality is only a day. In other words, the lack of visual stimuli near major highways causes boredom, which causes the perception that time is passing at a slower rate then it actually is.
Get it?
Oddly enough, I’d like to spend a few days there seeing where the global petroleum industry was born. I had a fun time in Cleveland one day checking out old Rockefeller sites, but couldn’t make it out east.
But then, I’m weird that way. My wife and I once took a driving tour of Ivy League Universities once: we saw Penn, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Princeton.
Everytime I go to maine, I see a lot of cars with the “Vacationland” word taped over-they have “Taxationland” on it!
Is this legal?
Anybody know if Arkansa is plugging the bill Clinton connection? Would you go to Little Rock to see the library?
Just wondering! course there are other attractions:
-visit the boyhood home of Bill Clinton
-visit the Tyson Chicken Co. synthesis plant no. 1
Other than that, can’t think of any reason to go to ARKANSAS…unless you want to try to find a diamond!
Heh… I guess you tend to forget about what’s in your own back yard. The birth of the global petroleum industry is certainly a claim to fame, but when you’re from there, you tend to overlook your own history. I remember when I was a kid I was always mystified by the Energy song on Schoolhouse Rock. It gave a rapid, spoken history of energy usage in the United States, and whenever I heard the line, “…and then, in 1859, waaaaaaay out in western Pennsylvania…” I would be struck that where I lived was potentially exotic, potentially waaaaaaay off for someone.
History class in grade school occasionally brought up the Drake well up in Titusville (about forty minutes by car from my native Hermitage.) That was the town that they always talked about, since it was the first, but there’s more to the story, of course. There were a couple of boom towns that sprang up. One was called Oil City, which is still around, and another was called Pitthole, which isn’t. Dad heard about it or knew about it or something, and he took us kids up there one Saturday. There’s a tourist center (or at least there was, back in the early 1980s; I don’t know if it’s still there,) filled with old oil drilling machinery and placards telling you about the history of Pitthole. There was even a short movie about Pitthole, which sprang up in 1865, met two thirds of the world’s crude oil needs in 1866, and burned to the ground in 1867.
A few old building foundations remain, but since it was mostly made of wood, it was gone. I’m not sure why no one moved back. I remember they had a short movie about the short history of Pitthole, and right at the point where it was talking about the fire that destroyed Pitthole, the film started burning! At first I thought it was part of the show, but it was just one of those happy accidents that make funnier truth than fiction.
Come to think of it, we do have something else that’s unique to western Pennsylvania: the Pymatuning Spillway. It’s not petroleum related, but it’s cool as hell. I’ve been there a couple of times, and the ducks really do walk on the backs of the fish. Definitely worth the trip. Not too far north of exit 4A on I-80!