FunnyCamper wrote:
you made a critical error---you read something :)
I find this and several statements made to the effect that one shouldn't believe anything in the Denver Post rather bothersome. If you read the article, you'd see opinions expressed on both sides. Positives from the point of view of increased business and tax revenues and negatives from people tired of lines and crowds. The Post is just reporting on a phenomenon that has the people in our mountain towns talking.
I ski or snowboard 80+ days a year and camp a similar amount, so I travel a lot all over this state and get to interact with the residents of these mountain communities. (Lots of time to talk with people when sharing a chair lift ride.) Just yesterday, we biked up to Maroon Bells and at the top talked with several "locals" from Marble, Frisco, Dillon, etc., and to a person, all brought up the impact so many visitors (from Denver and beyond) was having on their communities, without any prodding from me. Restaurant owners I know here talk about the long lines on weekends and worry about a drop in the quality of their service because of the hour wait for a table. Plus, their staffs are working so hard for dinner rushes that now last four or five hours. (Maybe that happens in the big city, but it hasn't been common here until the last couple of years.)
Let me give one other example. One day last year, during Christmas break, there wasn't a pair of skis to be rented from the Front Range, through Dillon and Frisco and Summit County, past Vail and Beaver Creek, and on down to Glenwood Springs. Our local ski mountain had to refund money on ski tickets simply because their visitors couldn't get skis to rent anywhere. All of the ski resorts along I-70 no doubt had some unhappy customers who had spend big money to fly in, rent a car, get rooms, but couldn't ski. And that's not even to mention how long the lift lines were.
Of course all this business is giving us a booming economy. (Colo Native: That's one reason why so many people are moving here.) Great if that impacts your bottom line. But the downside is that it's getting tough to find and keep employees, as housing is getting so expensive. Yeah, our property values have gone up, but that means higher taxes and insurance, and since we don't plan on selling anytime soon, that higher value means nothing to us. Employees often are commuting an hour or more each way as they can't afford anything closer. This means even more cars making the road situation even worse. At rush hour, it now takes 15 to 20 minutes to go the three miles through Glenwood Springs. Ugh.
But in terms of RVers boycotting Colorado, lets be honest. RVers really aren't a big part of the problem. Yes, there are tons of them on the road on the weekends, but typically, most eat at least some of their meals in their rigs and many spend more of their time out of doors rather than clogging up the streets of the little towns. Even if every out of state RVer boycotted Colorado, the impact on the restaurants and roads wouldn't be what you might think. The main exception would be places like Estes Park, Grand Lake, and communities immediately bordering the popular National Parks.
No, the Denver Post is reporting on a very real problems faced by mountain communities here in Colorado, so those who say "I wouldn't believe much of what the Denver Post prints!" don't really have their finger on the pulse of the communities up here.
