Sunday, May 18, 2003
The tour was held in celebration of National Tourism Week.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
From a seat high up in a giant 60-passenger motor coach, Trumbull County looks vibrant and green, there's no traffic and even red lights seem to change more quickly.
Through the giant, shaded glass windows of a tour bus, everything looks picturesque. The vehicle is high enough off the ground that you can see over some trucks, and passing cars are invisible.
If you become sick of looking out the windows, overhead television monitors show the view from the bus's nose.
The county offers tourists a range of sites and stops, from Amish country farms to art galleries and assembly lines.
About 300 tour buses ply their way through the county each year, offering their loads of passengers -- mostly retirees -- a view of Trumbull County that few who live here ever have.
The high-spirited sexagenarians on the Trumbull County Convention and Visitors Bureau's "mystery tour" Wednesday liked what they saw.
A seat on the bus for the day-long tour cost $28, and nearly all were filled.
Tourism week
The tour, in conjunction with National Tourism Week, hit spots that out-of-town tour buses frequent: Henn Workshops in Lordstown; the covered bridge in Newton Falls; Costello's Candy in Girard; the Butler Institute of American Art and Katie's Korner Ice Cream, both in Howland; and McKinley Memorial in Niles.
"I've always wanted to come here," said Donna Holko of Braceville, standing by a display case holding a William McKinley doorknob, salt shaker and pipe in the presidential memorial. "This is great."
Local tourism overall has dropped off since 2001, said Teresa Kirkland, interim director of the visitors bureau, but interest in visiting rural parts of the county, which people perceive as being safe, has grown, she said.
"They are looking for more agriculture, the old-fashioned kind or the family kind," she said.
The visitors bureau has created tour itineraries, including Amish farms, dairy farms and the Lake County Farm Park to accommodate them, she said.
Seniors on the tour admired the covered bridge, during the short walk across.
They posed a variety of questions to basket weavers at the Henn Workshops, which offers drop-in tours at 10 a.m. daily. At the gift shop, they browsed but didn't really buy.
At the McKinley Memorial, they walked through a reconstruction of the president's first home and listened with interest to Ida McKinley impersonator Mary Jane Queen of North Akron.
Then back on the bus.
siff@vindy.com