I have had the pleasure of trailing alongside Russ Roca and Laura Crawford from Path Less Pedaled. Russ and Laura hail from Oregon, where there is a lot of great things going on. The Coalition arranged to have them present at three locations this week – Council Bluffs, Perry, and Ankeny. This follows a presentation at the Iowa Tourism Conference.
After this week, there will more people in Iowa talking about bicycle travel and tourism. And it is hitting the mainstream media. Just take a look at the Jennie-O campaign on the Wabash Trace.
And the message is fairly simple. Create places to ride and market to people who might want to ride them. Often this means tweaking what you are already doing for tourism. People don’t ride bikes for 100% of their vacation, just was wine drinkers don’t drink 100% of the time.
Other tips include name your routes, get everything online, and make it simple. People will come if they only have to make a couple of phone calls and emails to make the ride happen.
Also they called out our gravel road network. Just check out www.iowagravelroads.com and see what an extensive network exists.
