What's the biggest tourist attaction near your home?

What is a big tourist spot near you and do you ever go to it?

There is a place 25 miles from here, Pymatuning State Park Spillway, that gets 300,000 visitors a year. It’s known as “the place where the ducks walk on the fish” which I have witnessed. There are many 1000’s of very large carp that people throw bread to. Pretty cool thing to see. I make it there once a year when I go to the nearby feed mill to buy fish food.

The video only shows the area below the spillway but there are probably more fish than that above the spillway along several hundred yards of railing.

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Hmm…
I live in the Coachella Valley, and the biggest tourist attraction around here might be the Coachella music festival, which is two weekends per year.
I don’t like concerts, and the music festival is way too expensive for my modest means.
I would rather listen to music at home (which I do every day) than go to a concert, even if the concert is free and it features my favorite artists. :dollar:

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Unno, Manhattan is one big tourist trap, if that counts.

Got Forest Hills Stadium(?) for tennis stuff.

Mets Stadium and Yankee Stadium, whatever they’re called nowadays (probably Pepsi Stadium and Allstate Stadium or something like that), for baseball.

The basketball place that JZ bought or something.

Woodbury Something for concerts.

Aqueduct Racetrack for horsies. That I remember because I used to pass it going to a bud’s house in Richmond Hill.

I don’t keep track of these things, but those are what I remember offhand.

I’ve been to Mets Stadium as a kid, back when it was called Shea Stadium. That’s pretty much it. Never been to any of the others.

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The original Woodstock site is pretty close. Now it is owned by a large corporation and the vibe is definitely not similar to 1969 but what is? Now it is a museum and concert venue along with other festivals like fall stuff and wine tastings. Now it attracts trendy people unlike the original free for all. Still pretty cool though. You can stop by the field where the 69 festival happened for free, it is along a public road. There is a monument with all the bands that played on it. Left over hippy types that attended the original are usually around to talk about it. Some I think never left. :grinning:

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The Civil War Battlefields are in my back yard. A few folks come to see.
c

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One hour to the west is the pacific ocean…

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Door county, all the fibs come up there on the weekends

I live about an hour east of Nashville, I hear that’s a pretty big tourist attraction.

Other than that, I live about 20 minutes from Burgess Falls State Park which attracts about 200,000 people a year:

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Near me? Nothing really special. There’s Portland 10 min from us (was nice 20 years ago, now not so much…we got issues), Moda Center and the Rose Quarter where the Blazers play and lots of concerts. If you drive a couple hours:
Mt St Helens national monument
Mt Hood, Timberline Lodge tons of winter type sports
Ape Caves
Canon Beach
Long Beach (WA)
Newport OR
Astoria WA (think Goonies, Kindergarten Cop)
Many lighthouses
Seattle WA
Mt Ranier
Drive many more hours (4+) and you get to Crater Lake

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The Mayo Clinic probably

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Em-Err-Ahaa,
The biggest Costco in Texas opened here last week.
180000 sqft. Friends kid works there. Met the CEO. He started as a forklift driver. Neat that everyone comes up through ranks.
All the Best, Jeff

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well, what does near mean in this context?
Red Rocks Amphitheater is within maybe 5 miles. Big name bands, always sold out. Lots of tourists.

The National Western Stock show. Draws around 700,000 people from all over the country.

If you go out 0ne to four hours, all kinds of stuff in the mountains. Hiking, white water rafting, some spectacular fly fishing, winter skiing, snowmobile trails, hunting, and lots of hot springs. Lots of tourists come through Denver to do all of that stuff. Does that count?

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biggest?

is that the one that attracts the most tourists?
or measured in square miles but not people?
regardless, most likely it would be the beach
or the mountains, but neither are that close.

Just a short summary for now; I will try to add some pictures (and maybe some extra details) tomorrow.


The biggest tourist attraction, a couple of minutes away from me, is the (Dutch) Nationaal Militair Museum (translated: National Militairy Museum), located on the former military Soesterberg Air Base. (Later more on that last part.)

It was created when 2 different museums, the “Leger Museum” from Delft and the “Militair Luchtvaart Museum” from Soesterberg merged together in the newly build museum in around 2011/2012 (I believe?!?).
As a young boy growing up next the ‘Military Aviation Museum’ (which could be visited free of charge!) I feel that aviation part didn’t get enough attention (based on the huge collection they had), compared to the Army part, in the new Museum. (But having grown up next to a Military Airbase, I might be a bit biased though!

Back to the fact that the current location of the Museum is on the former Soesterberg Airbase; one of the older military aviation sites in the Netherlands, dating back to 1913!

Besides all the roles it served for the Dutch Royal Airforce, and for a couple of years as a German Fliegerhorst under WW2 occupation, it has also hosted an American fighter squadron for 40 years during the cold war. Without going into much detail, the squadron, is most widely known now as the 32nd TFS, "(The) Wolfhounds. The original Wolfhounds logo is stated to date back to WWII, (before it’s Soesterberg Period) and is allegedly designed by Walt Disney Studios.
‘The Wolfhounds’ landed in 1954 with F-86 Sabre and afterwards flew the F-100 Super Sabre, F-102 Delta Dagger, F-4 Phantom and the F-15 Eagle.
In 1994, after 40 years of pressence in Soesterberg, the last F-15’s departed, marking the end of a (unique) era that has helped to shape the small villages around the base (like Soesterberg for example).

After another (roughly) 14 years of use by the Royal Dutch Airforce, the Airbase was finally closed in 2008, due to new budget cuts, just 5 years shy of it’s 100 year aniversary, marking the end of (one of) the oldest Military Airbases in the Netherlands.

Nowadays large parts of the former base are open (you can walk a large stretch of the former 3000m runway, see some part of the infrastructure (like a number of reinforced aircraft shelters) and other remains of the airbase, although large parts have been demolished over time.

I will try to ad some pictures in one of the following days and try to make the whole story a bit more coherent. Just a bit to tired to do that now! :smiling_face:

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Red Rocks also hosts a huge worship concert there. Hope to go one day!

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The K-Love/Elevation concert series? I haven’t been to one. But I have gone to the Sunrise Easter services there several times. It is a heck of a venue. Beautiful scenery and real good acoustics.

Chitown for me. Personally it’s too far away from everything for me and there are way too many people there for me.

Our entire city, San Francisco, is a tourist attraction :unamused:

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looks outside through the window.

I live in Alaska. 'Nuff said. Not sure how to choose the biggest attraction as the whole state is the attraction.

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Valley Forge National Hisorical Park.

Approximately 2 million people per year.

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