Project Summary

Student Proposals

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The Medora Day trips project is conceived as a means of investigation of place- that which entices visitors to visit a particular destination and as a vehicle for disseminating information about tourist attractions near Medora, North Dakota which may be of interest to people already planning to visit Medora.

To understand the places that might be attractive to Medora-based tourists, 9 North Dakota State University tourism planning students worked in pairs to research the existing nature and cultural tourism products (things to see and do) in specific communities and landscapes near Medora. They initially mapped these and then devised an itinerary for visiting each destination along the most beautiful and dynamicly interesting routes. In these expeditions, visitors are not just seeking a destination but rather the destination is just a point along culturally infused routes rich with wildlife watching opportunities. Lastly, the students developed some suggestions for additional things that visitors might like to do in the landscapes and communities they visited.

The five itineraries are structured to appeal to the type of traveler who decides to visit a destination based on the gestalt of all nature and culturally based tourism offerings in or near it. With these itineraries, visitors can choose whether to see a place (which they may not have previously known to exist) or engage in an activity based on its proximity to their other travel destinations and objectives.

Five day- long expedition routes overlay together like this.

To avoid misunderstanding, the students have excluded community amenities that are typically non-attractions to visitors, such as church spaghetti dinners, the location of a softball feild, or whether or not a town has a Wal-Mart. Although the presence or absence of these kinds of things may contribute greatly to the nature of a community, they do not normally entice tourists to visit and rarely contribute to the critical mass of “things to see and do” in an area from the perspective of nature and cultural tourism. Therefore, there may be places of interest to some tourists that may not be included here- such as chain restaurants and chain motels in Dickinson. Such things are easily locatable by a Web search or in the yellow pages. For the purposes of the itineraries here, the students strictly focused on local attractions which may otherwise be difficult for tourists to find.

The last several pages of each itinerary is designed for the study communities themselves. These pages comprise some specific student recommendations for additional tourism products that community members could add, based on the student's observed opportunities for each place.

The day trips are set up as individual trip itineraries. They could equally be looped together to create longer trips where they intersect for a weekend or even a week. A week long trip might follow a combination of the routes above, stopping at each destination described by the students in their short itineraries.

Enjoy your perusal and Happy Trails!