db wrote on Jan 18^th, 2010 at 8:22am:

OK, I don't get what you guys are referring to. Enlighten me please?

Speaking for myself, I don't like that they want to dictate what sorts of services you have to use to qualify to use Stanton Bay.  I make it a point to always spend some coin locally when I make a canoe trip.  I eat at least one meal pre and post-trip.  I buy souvenirs for my kids.  I usually give into the temptation for a last-minute lure or two.  I used to buy leeches.  Usually in Atikokan I buy lodging.  I fill up the car.

Yet somehow, this just isn't enough.  I need to buy an outfitters services to use a road that I used to be able to freely use.

I make fewer trips out of the northern side of the park than I used to.  I used to go almost exclusively thru Pickerel (Stanton) and Beaverhouse.  Since they made it clear that I'm not really all that welcome to come up that way (unless I do things the way THEY want me to do them), I rarely ever enter the park that way.  Instead, I buy tows across La Croix or up the Moose Chain or go in thru Sag.

The downside for them is that as a park veteran who influences many trips through what I write here and through people I interact with, they have lost my endorsement and thus some business (most likely).  They want to shun me because I don't meet their definition if the ideal tourist yet they fail to account for the fact that I can and do influence people who ARE their ideal tourists, plus they lose all the dollars I would have spent had I gone there.

When people walk into my restaurant I don't demand that they order the most expensive thing on the menu, or demand that they spend XXX dollars or I won't let them in the door (or make them sit at rickety tables if they insist on coming in anyway).  I welcome them in, make sure I give them the best service I can, and thank them for coming when they leave whether they just got a coffee and a cup of soup or they just sprung for the bill for a party of 25 people who were eating and drinking like there's no tomorrow.  They might only spend $4 with me today, but if they like my restuarant they will be back and they will tell other people.  And in the meantime, I'm $4 ahead of where I would have been than if I'd told them to get lost.

Just sayin'!  

Sorry db, you stuck the quarter in me, so there you go.