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Food | Travel/Recreation | Wildlife
West Virginia's Hunters Step Up to the Plate
12/29/2008
deer hunters thumbDeer hunting dominates the Mountain State this time of year. Sharpshooters are targeting hunger as well as big bucks.
Travel/Recreation
Troubled Times, Even at Nascar
12/15/2008
Ford is cutting its Nascar budget by 20%. Chrysler by 30%. Chevy is nipping its advertising budget and sponsorship at 12 tracks. In the 2008 racing season, reports The New York Times, companies put up $1.5 billion to sponsor cars and drivers. The Big Three automakers accounted for a third of that. Now the Detroit Debacle is hurting not only Monday through Friday, but Sunday afternoon, too.

Okay, every sport is losing sponsors during this recession. General Motors isn't going to buy one ad during the Super Bowl. Honda is out of Formula One racing. But Nascar?

The Times tells Nascar's sizzling success story — a family-run enterprise that pulled in $3 billion last year, 50% more than in 2001, a faster rate of growth than the NFL or the NBA. But TV viewership has slipped of late and so had attendance. Along the way, Nascar has gotten corporate, the Times writes, and it doesn't help that a sport that started on dirt tracks is now charging $92 a pop for tickets from fans, half of whom earn less than $50,000 a year. There have been 600 layoffs at Nascar and in several teams and teams are merging like Wall Street banks.
Travel/Recreation
Western Recreation Companies Tumble in Down Economy
10/25/2008
mountain climber
High fuel prices and national belt-cinching are bringing especially hard times to rural recreation companies. Shannon Dininny of AP reports on several businesses in Washington, California and Montana that have catered to outdoor enthusiasts.

In Trout Lake, Washington, huge snowfalls last winters made the town inaccessible to tourists. Then spring fires kept hikers and rock climbers away. Now with a perilous economy, the owner of the local outdoor shop is closing. A business in Fawnskin, California, has fared better, under more normal weather conditions. Captain John's Fawn Harbor and Marina also "sits just 2 1/2 hours from 15 million people who don't have the money to travel overseas."

Dininney writes that the rec companies in remote areas are feeling the biggest strain now but many others may soon be facing similar problems. A Montana outdoor business owner said "inquiries and bookings for next season are down by 50 percent from an average year."

Education | Travel/Recreation
A Big Dent in Rural School Busing
09/20/2008
kids on bus thumb
The wide open spaces of rural Texas are presenting major problems in school transportation. The Temple Daily Telegram reports on Rogers ISD: 144 square miles, 10 buses, and only three schools. Since the 1980s, the State of Texas has allocated school transportation funds based on enrollment. So now, with fuel prices soaring, that leaves tiny Rogers without enough money to run its 10 school buses.

Rogers ISD has a transportation budget of $347,811 for this school year. The superintendent says that based on enrollment, the state will pay only about $100,000 for transportation, less than a third. To make ends meet, the school district is making changes, including "clustered pickups and drop-offs."

In Eastern Kentucky, the Jenkins school district has taken a more radical step. To save money, Jenkins ISD has trimmed the school week down to four days. CBN reports that at least 100 districts nationwide have gone to the shorter school week.

Main Street Economics | Travel/Recreation
West Texas Towns Clamor to Keep Highway Funding
09/19/2008
amarillo highway thumb
The mayors of West Texas came on strong with state leaders Thursday to stress how their local economies rely on sound transportation systems. "Our community continues to grow, our work force is here and will continue to grow," Amarillo Mayor Debra McCartt said. "Our rail, air and roads are the main reasons why that is. But as fuel costs ... and other expenses go up ... that's going to become more of a challenge."

Elsewhere, problems in rural road funding were the impetus behind Club 20, a 55-year-old organization of governments on Colorado's Western Slope. In Pennsylvania, conflicts between rural and urban regions grew acrimonious earlier this year.

With rising gas and diesel costs generating declines in driving, fuel tax revenues, which fund highway improvements, are down dramatically. "Traffic gridlock is commonplace in Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio and is likely to gain much of lawmakers' attention as they consider how to divvy the state's transportation budget." The mayors foresee that allocations favoring cities may stall ongoing road projects in West Texas.

(For a respite from money problems, listen to Robert Earl Keen singing "Amarillo Highway," a "dust-bowling" tune by Lubbock-native Terry Allen.)

Travel/Recreation
Geocaching: It'll Bring Out the Pirate in You
08/21/2008
geocache thumb
In 2000, Dave Ulmer of Portland, OR, put out a cache of "treasure" and challenged the public to find it using GPS technology. With guidance from GPS super-compasses (costing $75-$1000), the hunt was on. Now geocaching has become a hot hobby across the U.S. and the world.

There are about 430,000 caches hidden all over the globe. Some, the size of postage stamps, contain only tiny logbooks that successful scavengers sign with their "eureka." Caches rural areas can be quite a bit larger and still remain inconspicuous; these may contain trinkets or even cash prizes (the rule is: take out a souvenir, and leave one behind, too). The website http://www.geocaching .com is one place to start.

Karina Bland's feature story for the Arizona Republic gives a tantalizing flavor of this craze. "It was like I was a kid again, finding that treasure," said Ed Schraut of Sun City. He found a trunk near the Vulture Mine, near Wickenburg, AZ, containing eye patches, bandanas and plastic pieces of eight. Gay Griebach reports that the Chamber of Commerce in West Bend, Wisconsin, calls its town geocache capitol of the Midwest, boasting "450 caches within a 7-mile radius."  

It sounds like an ideal combination of road rally and scavenger hunt -- Perfect for garage-sale fans who love the outdoors and would just as soon not buy anything.

BioFuels and Energy | Travel/Recreation
Less Driving across the U.S., Especially in Rural
08/15/2008
country roadHigh gas prices, an older population, and greater poverty all have opened up country roads since 2007. A new federal highway report shows less driving everywhere.
Travel/Recreation
Violent Clashes Increase Over Off-Road Vehicles
08/12/2008
Add a human being to a motorized vehicle and you end up with some form of rage. The Washington Post reports this morning that the newest form of vehicular madness is "off-road rage," what happens when off road riders meet up with everyone else in the wilderness.

We suspect this is nothing new, that ORV riders and everyone else have been ticked off at each other since the first four-wheeler. (Richard Nixon issued an executive order in 1972 protecting public land from off-road riders.) Now, however, there are 50 million of these buggers zipping about, from Yellowstone to the Hatfield McCoy trails in West Virginia. And confrontations are mounting.

Off-road riders now account for 10 percent of visitors to public lands, and the noise tees off the other 90 percent of visitors. What to do? Nobody knows. The average federal land law officer must patrol 1.5 million acres. And, meanwhile, the tussles between ORV riders and others grow more frequent and violent.
Travel/Recreation
Black Athletes Now Funding NASCAR Teams
08/11/2008
When the first black driver in NASCAR placed 10th in the Southern 500 at Darlington in 1965, the race promoter owed Wendell Scott $900. Scott never got a dime. He waited with the other drivers for his money and when he didn't get paid, he went to the promoter's office. The man kicked Scott out and told him to get "down the road." Scott is still the only black driver to win a top-ranked NASCAR race, at the 1963 race in Jacksonville. Even then he wasn't awarded an official victory until days after the race.

ESPN's Ed Hinton has a good story on the slow integration of stock car racing. Hinton follows the career of Marc Davis, a young driver in the Camping World East series who is looking for a break. (Davis above.) There are only six black drivers in NASCAR's developmental leagues.

The main problem black drivers have isn't white or black, the article says, but green. It takes loads of money to run a competitive team. Interestingly, black stars from other sports are funding teams. Brad Daugherty, a North Carolina basketball player, is fielding a team. So is New England Patriots receiver Randy Moss, who owns half of a Truck series team.
Health | Travel/Recreation
How Deadly Are The Roads You Drive? -- Take a Look
07/29/2008
Michigan fatal accidents
A new interactive map produced by the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety charts all the highway fatalities in the US from 2006. And it offers vivid proof of rural highway dangers and the public policies that can make driving safer.

The new tool was made public yesterday (the map above shows rural highway deaths in Michigan from the summer of 2006).

Users can examine the data many ways -- for example, to check whether accidents were alcohol related, to gauge enforcement of seat belt laws, even to see photos of the danger spots along local roads.

"CERS officials hope the tool will educate the public" -- especially those who live in rural areas -- "about road fatalities. U.S. Census figures show that 21 percent of Americans live in rural areas and the Federal Highway Administration has found that 57 percent of highway deaths happen on rural roads."

Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural
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