We have had a good fall season with
a lot of visitors filling our parks, filling our lodging facilities, attending
festivals and events and many fall foliage seekers. I typically, from the
tourism point of view, consider our fall tourist season to start with Fort
Payne Boom Days Heritage Celebration the third week of September and ending
after Thanksgiving. These dates represent the span when we get the largest
amount of visitors coming to our county to enjoy fall. Within that time frame
are the primary things that attract our out of town visitors; Boom Days, DeKalb
VFW Agricultural Fair, Mentone Colorfest and the primary one is not an event
but the landscape and the weather. Our visitors come to enjoy our beautiful
scenery during fall and our beautiful fall foliage. Visitors come because the
weather is cooler and clearer and we usually have less rain in September and
October but this year everything is different. The good news is the visitors
are still coming for the same reason; the bad news is they are not getting our
typical fall environment. Our record drought and record heat has left our
rivers and waterfalls 100% dry for the first time anyone can remember. Fall
foliage has gotten pretty nice now but overall is not up to normal. Trees near
lakes or rivers that have water look good but when you look at the
mountainside the colors are mostly shades of brown with a hint of red and
yellow but not quite as vibrant as usual. The drought has caused many trees to
shed their leaves early or they have just turned brown. Most of our visitors
don't seem too surprised that they are not getting to see water in our
waterfalls. Most live within the drought area and knew it would be dry here.
Some people however from outside the drought area like from Louisiana, parts of
Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky that did not have the severe drought are
disappointed when they get to our major waterfall attractions and they are not
flowing at all. We had a tour bus of 53 retirees from Birmingham a couple weeks
ago. I served as the step on guide. They had a great time and loved our scenic
beauty but when we visited DeSoto Falls and Little River Canyon they were more
amazed by the dry riverbed and no water coming of the falls then they were by its
inherent beauty. It became a topic of conversation and agreement about climate
change and what is going on that in October it has been in the high 80’s and
low 90’s all month. I had personal plans to take an updated picture of Little
River Canyon this fall for advertising. The lack of water made me cancel that
picture for this year. Can you imagine an advertising shot of Little River
Canyon with a dried up river bed and no waterfalls?
Now that we are into the first week
of November we are nearing the peak of fall foliage color and soon the leaves
will fall and as we move toward Thanksgiving, by then most all signs of fall
will be gone and our landscape will turn to winter. We have many visitors that
come for Thanksgiving. They rent cabins or camp and have Thanksgiving with
family that meets them here. It has become good tourism business for us. It
also marks the end of our fall tourism season. After Thanksgiving everyone
turns their focus to Christmas and winter weather sets in and people cozy up at
home and our area gets quiet in the places that were full of tourists just a
few weeks prior.
During the winter season we get
visitors when Cloudmont Ski Resort is open and we get some winter visitors who
like to hike and ride bikes or camp in the winter landscape and they like the
cooler temperatures. For the most part our tourism season slowly begins again
in middle and late March as school spring breaks come about and the first hints
of spring dot the landscape with yellow Daffodils and grass that is beginning
to turn green.
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