This Weekend in Schuylkill County?

Have you ever heard anyone say, “There’s never anything to do around here!”

We are in the middle of the Summer of 2008 and every weekend has got to have at least a half dozen unique events going on around this county. This particular weekend features a couple of the big draw annual events as the Clover’s Irish Weekend kicks off on Friday night, and the Schuylkill County Fair opens on Sunday. Okay so you’re not Irish. Well what about the 74th Annual Ukrainian Seminary Day to be held at the Saint Nicholas Picnic Grove at Primrose (outside of Minersville)? What? You don’t like bleenies and halushkie?

There is stuff going on all over the place. The Lazy Dog has live music this Friday and Saturday, Christmas Pines Campground near Auburn has a weekend long event “Christ in the Pines”, Twin Grove Campground has Christmas in July, Frackville will entertain Alvin and the Chipmunks in the park, Hawk Mountain features a Butterfly program, Tuscarora State Park offers a hike along the lake, I mean the variety does not end!

I’ll tell ya what I’m gonna do. Let’s see how good this blog is working. The first person to call me this week and tells me that you read the blog and you want a Schuylkill County Fair Pass, I will give you two passes. The rules? You can not be an employee here at the Bureau, and you can not be one of our Board of Directors. Call me during regular hours, Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The first one that tells either Donna or Mark that you read the blog and want to claim your tickets, then you are the winner! Easy as that. We will tell you how you can pick up your free fair passes. Now the challenge for you .. find our phone number. And messages on our machine don't count. You have to speak to a live body here.

Let’s just see how good this new website and blog thing really is!

Have a great weekend!

Welcome to Schuylkill County

Well it is finally here. Our Schuylkill County Visitors Bureau Blog has been launched. Now our challenge is to make our new website more interesting, as well as interactive for our visitors from near and far.

Since the new site just launched earlier this week, I am asking website visitors to participate in the monthly poll featured on our landing page. Our first poll seeks to get a handle on just how often our website visitors actually travel to the area. We know that local residents use the website for event information, while our visiting public is more interested in local lodging and dining opportunities. Whatever your reason for checking out the website, please take the time and take the poll each month.

But hey, it’s the middle of the summer of 2008 and people have been busy around here. I visited the Pioneer Tunnel yesterday, and they report that their numbers are up. The Yuengling Brewery tours? Visitation is up! Do these increasing numbers have anything to do with the heat lately, and the fact that people are looking for “cool” ways to escape the warm temps? Are gas prices having a negative impact on the local tourism trade? We have several indicators suggesting that business is doing pretty well locally.

So I am asking you the fans of the Visitors Bureau to let me know if gas prices are having a negative impact on either your business, or your travel itineraries. Talk to me.