Quote:
Originally Posted by kwoldtimer
Are you sure that's not the queue at the Service Ontario kiosk in Hearst?  |
This question of travel is a pretty interesting one.
As I said before, a huge number of Winnipeggers - I'd imagine it's a strong if not vast majority - have been to North Dakota to shop at least once or twice in their lives. It's the one US destination everyone here has in common, not surprisingly because it's 2.5/3.5 hours away by car (Grand Forks/Fargo, respectively) and we don't have that many other easily driveable destinations within reach.
The other common road-trip destination is Minneapolis (7.5 hours) although it's much less frequently visited. Not that many people I know have driven down to Chicago or KC even though you could do it in a day (12-13 hours, approx.).
In terms of fly-in tourism destinations, the most common ones are without a doubt Phoenix, Las Vegas, Florida (Disney is like Mecca for middle-class kids, you have to go at least once in your life), and maybe to a lesser extent, New York and Southern California. There are good chunks of the US that seem like terra incognita to Winnipeggers, though... much of the southern states and the mid-south, the rust belt states, as well as the more southerly Great Plains (Oklahoma, Arkansas, etc.) and the upper Northeast. For instance, I know some pretty well travelled people but no one ever goes to Cincinnati, Birmingham, Little Rock or Louisville.
I don't think Winnipeg has a singular dominant business destination in the US the way that Calgary has Houston or Toronto has NY. Minneapolis, Chicago and NY are probably the major ones, although we don't have flights to the latter.
Not many Americans make it out here other than people within a few hours' drive who come for the weekend. You get a fair number of hunters and fishers who stop here (many lodges are owned by, and cater exclusively to Americans), and a good number of American eco-tourists stop on their way to Churchill, but that's about it.
On the whole I'd say that the perceptions of Americans are pretty good here... if only because the neighbouring states seem exactly like here, if quite a bit less ethnically diverse as North Dakota is.