Oped: The New Tourism---Snowmobile Tourism

Recently at the Tourism Subcomittee in Evansville, when the surveys were tabulated, you can hear in the audio of the meeting, a person asserting that "of course most of the focus of the tourism must be for the downtown". However---- I had the pleasure to taking a weekend up at Manitowish Waters and visited "Little Bohemia" on a Saturday night for dinner----it was wonderful, as as we were exiting I took a visit to the brand new bar with big screen tv--it was playoff weekend, and as the game ended, the visitors--fully garbed in snowmobile gear came out--i had seen the trucks outside with the trailers, and also snowmobiles parked, but had not put everything together---it was a great weekend to combine snowmobile fun with football, with great dining....In summary, there was plenty of money spent that night. In Evansville, on a winter night how many snowmobiles come to town....to visit local pubs? I think you would be amazed to know this number. My point is why not have a weekend in the midst of the snow season, a "Celebrate Snowmobile Weekend". Maybe there could be some seminars on maintanance, apparel, trails, travel etc that folks could attend in the day and linedancing in the evening...and they could drive their snowmobiles in to town in designated routes. Snowmobile tourism....they are coming here anyway...why not make a bigger event out of it and celebrate with them, and develop this tourism component?