This year, here in cottage country, tourism is down because the gas prices are up. Because the gas costs more, people are less willing to spend so much money to travel long distances, and so often they end up staying at home. I’m actually surprised at how few people consider taking a vacation in their own region instead of staying at home.

For instance, my daughter and two of her friends decided this year instead of going to ‘camp’, they wanted me to take them camping (yes,I am lucky to be considered one of the ‘girls’, and when they are 12/13 year olds, that is quite a privelege.) We talked about it, and decided to go to Sauble Falls Provincial Park [http://www.ontarioparks.com/english/saub.html], which is about a 25 minute drive from our homes. This is eco-tourism at its best: enjoying being in nature without traveling a long way and burning lots of GHGs. We were even lucky enough to be in a tent through 2 major electrical storms (and lightning is tied to climate change, by the way: see http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/329791_climate01.html) along with 3 days of swimming and hiking. I must admit that the girls did want to go into Sauble Beach sometimes, but we went to a local restaurant (Macbeth’s) that has fair trade organic coffee and homemade vegetarian meals, which minimized our carbon footprint for the trip a little. Being in the outdoors and getting lots of exercise was good for us too. Now, if they were old enough to bike there, our eco-trip would have been even greener, but we did have to be practical too.

If everyone could think about minimizing their carbon footprint in their vacations, and in turn support their local economies more, it would be a win-win-win situation for us, the environment and our local communities.