Tourism, Recreation, & Culture
- 1. Create a county-wide network of recreation around the river and begin building The Duck River Trails that winds through the entire county
2. Create accessible recreation for seniors and residents with disabilities including mobility device use. We can have areas with rentals for adapted bike models for our residents without access. Everyone should be able to enjoy the outdoors and get exerciseFamily-friendly events focusing on opportunities for kids and teens year-round
3. Brand Bedford County as “The Heart of the Duck River” and promote stewardship of the water and ecosystem as part of our unified value system.
4. Expand the definition of horse-based tourism by creating a culture where all types of horse owners have opportunities to travel to our county and within our county by creating special trails for horse riding with new small vacation rental units designed for families with horses.
5. Create a local museum that incorporates children’s museum aspects with local identity by combining history with current practices. Show things like what is grown and how it is processed and what it becomes. We should take pride in our history and what we produce and grow here and raise our children to understand how much closer farm-to-table is here in this county.
6. Use the county to create a localized version of a gig economy that showcases our farm stands, farmer markets, home-based creators and chefs, and delivery models. We should reduce dependence on outside companies like Door Dash and instead create a local model with better coordination for getting things from farm stands to customer, as well as work with hotels (existing and any new lodging) to have featured areas in the lobbies of local goods and foods.
7. Expand the vision of what lodging looks like by creating small, eco-friendly cabins along the river and discuss with farmers the options of building small lodging on their land in which to create more income for the farmers. (Think 1 or 2 self-sufficiency mini cottages on land far away from the houses so folks can have private areas and enjoy the rolling hills and farm scenery) We can reduce the idea of infrastructure strain by exploring eco-friendly models that don’t depend on plugging into the major infrastructure like water and sewer.
8. Create swimming areas along the river that is staffed with lifeguards and have ropes and beaches so we have more places to swim
9. Create separate areas along the river for fishing, birdwatching, snorkeling, and boating so they don’t overlap and there’s areas for different types of outdoor use of our river and surrounding land.
10. Utilize our county overlap with I-24 and pull visitors off of the interstate and into our county for quick stops or overnight visits. We're missing a ton of potential revenue by a lack of vision for advertising our county on the interstate. We're right in the middle of major interstate travel and every car we're not pulling into our county is missed revenue and support for our local businesses
11. Talk with companies about having a truck stop here in our county where we can create jobs for local residents and provide 24 hour access to goods and food created in the county for both our truck drivers and tourists. Our overnight workers will also benefit from having accessible food and convenience items at all hours. We run 24/7, we should have places open 24/7 for humans to access what they need.
