Gulf Tourism - Summer of 2010- "Like visiting a loved one, on their deathbed"

[SoCalDem]

That's how someone today on MSNBC described it. I think they are right. People started "staying away" as the coverage ramped up, but the ones who are making pilgrimages there now, may just be seeing it one last time, while it's not yet totally ruined.

Everyone who's had a loved one losing a long battle with illness knows the feeling.

First there's disbelief.."Grandma looks fine, it's probably nothing..she'll beat this"..People flock around to give her encouragement

Then as she fails, people may feel too disturbed to watch her fail, so their visits turn into phone calls & cards, but fewer visits, lest they be visually assaulted by how she's slipping away.

Finally, they can no longer stay away if they want that last fleeting moment with her, while she can still communicate with them, so they go, and make their peace with the loss of her.

I think this is what's happened to the tourists. People LOVE their vacations. They covet those photos. Every family has boxes full of old pictures of when they were little..splashing in the surf. The one constant in the parade of pictures, is the place. There may now be new buildings where dowdy little shacks were in the black & white curly-edged photos of our youth, but the sea is the same...or WAS the same. The yearly pilgrimage to "that place" is the stuff of family "heritage".

Seeing a place you loved, ruined, is very much like the loss of a family member. You try to remember the good times, but if you have witnessed the bad, it's there too, never to be forgotten.

[Erose999]

1. I just came from a Gulf vacation this past weekend and

there was no oil on Panama City Beach or Mexico Beach. We did see trucks carrying booms and containment gear as well as some boats practicing laying gear in the harbors. BP is apparently contracting the fishermen to aid in the containment/cleanup efforts. They are also spamming all the media with their "making it right" ads. And they have set up office space in some previously vacant storefronts.

The beaches were all pretty empty, as were the tourist traps like souvenir shops, etc. I had seafood last Saturday night and it was good. The day we left we read reports of oil washing up on some of the other beaches.

I had never been to the gulf coast before, and I was amazed at just how much of the land down there is wetlands. There are bayous that go as far as 40 miles inland (probably farther for all I know), and in Panama bay there is an intercoastal waterway that actually runs from the Gulf coast to the Atlantic coast.

[SoCalDem]

3. The last time I was at the Gulf, I was a young twenty-something with my son in tow

I had been there many times as a child (the curly-edged black & white photos). I spent the first 4 years of my life in Key West, and many times after that we went through Alabama & Mississippi on our meandering drives to Florida...stopping often to dip a toe or two into the pristine waters when we saw a great beach through the foliage...back then you could just pull off to the roadsides and hike down a shell-encrusted embankment, and spend some time just taking it all in.. We'd pile back into the car, and be in the lookout for a roadside orange-juice vendor.

Land that was considered then to be wasteland, turned out to be the very incubator for what makes (made?) the Gulf what it is (was?)..sure there were mosquitoes big enough to haul off a small child, and of course the occasional gator or snake-in-the grass, but nature has a plan, and until humans muck it up, it all works out..

[MadHound]

2. Could also be due to the economy, people simply don't have the money for a major vacation

Hell, even some the local vacation spots in my state are seeing decreased numbers and we're nowhere near the Gulf.

The fact of the matter is that people are still hunkering down and trying to weather this economic storm. A lot of people don't have jobs, a lot of people are underwater on their homes, a lot of people don't know how they're going to make it, much less go on vacation.

I would love to go down to the Gulf, visit Pensacola and family I have there. Ain't happening, because I have no job and no spare money.

[RT Atlanta]

4. That's my approach at this time...

Heading to the FL Panhandle (Appalachicola area) in a few weeks with the mindset that it may be mine and my family's "last visit" for years to come. I sure hope I am wrong, but there is an awful lot of seen and unseen oil and damage waiting to happen.

Part of me also wants my children to see the damage (should the oil arrive before us) so that they can know and begin to understand how bad manmade disasters can be (and to develop a life long passion in them to fight against this kind of environmental extraction and pollution).

[SoCalDem]

5. The children of today, may be the ones who will have to step up & actually make the necessary change

Good for you, for showing them..even though it might not be as much fun as it would have been in the past. I'm sure there are still fun things to do there and along the way.. Happy Trails:)