See you in September.
Well, some of us will be working right through the dog days of August, but in Connecticut and most everywhere else business goes into idle mode as vacation bags get packed, whether for distant destinations ”“ or havens closer to home.
How far our outlook has come since the “Staycation” days of the Great Recession, when former Gov. M. Jodi Rell touted the state”™s attractions on the simple premise that the Gold Coast”™s newly destitute could not afford gas or airfare anymore (then hightailing it for a cruise in sunnier climes the moment her term ended).
Since revealing its “Still Revolutionary” tourism slogan in mid-May, visitors to the Connecticut Office of Tourism”™s ctvisit.com website are up 130 percent, according to data tracked by the Alexa Internet Web analytics service run by Amazon.
That beats the percentage changes at the official vacation websites for New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine ”¦ Get the picture?
In other words, Putnam Memorial State Park is rockin”™!
Well, actually we”™re still wondering about why Gov. Dannel P. Malloy included the Redding park on his recent whirlwind tours of Connecticut attractions.
Lake Compounce? Check. Maritime Aquarium? Of course.
Connecticut”™s “Valley Forge” perhaps best known for Gen. Israel Putnam ordering the execution of deserters on nearby Gallows Hill?
Take the kids and make a day of it!
Must”™ve been that “Still Revolutionary” jingle still ringing in Malloy”™s head. Anyway, if you can get by the humilities inflicted by the British on colonial Connecticut, it”™s clear the state has more than a little to offer tourists.
Correct, there”™s no Statue of Liberty here, no Cape Cod, no Niagara Falls. Hartford takes a backseat to Boston; Mystic ain”™t no Newport; Kent can”™t compare to North Conway.
Yes, we too marvel at the grandeur of the Connecticut River”™s sweep below the Gillette Castle hillside. Connecticut”™s casinos are still the best in the East, if looking nervously over their shoulder at developments in New York and Massachusetts. You can find a great show in Westport, East Haddam and other performance venues. You can relax at superb inns and spas, be it the Mayflower Inn or Winvian in Litchfield County, Waters Edge in Westbrook, Saybrook Point Inn & Spa or the new Madison Beach Hotel ”“ well, that”™s what we hear about it anyway.
We can do festivals with the best of them, whether OpSail in New London, Gathering of the Vibes in Bridgeport, you name it ”“ even the upcoming “Night of Amazing Horses” sponsored by the Second Company Governor”™s Horse Guard in Newtown.
What you won”™t find are the constant, omnipresent babble of the throngs ”“ you know, the hordes you find summer-long in Newport, Provincetown or Ogunquit, the top beach towns in New England according to Yankee Magazine along with Nantucket.
You”™ll see a lot of New York plates on Connecticut highways the next several weeks, fighting traffic to get to those places. Some of them have already seen what they are going to see in Connecticut ”“ probably most of those folks have not scratched much below the surface.
All we do know is that a lot more people are checking out Connecticut ”“ online anyway, which might mean more visitors to the shoreline and the sight lines.
A rambling editorial, you say? Well, we say that”™s not far from the beaten path of the best summer vacations ”“ following wherever the trails, waterways or links lead.
