Upstairs Lobby to Deluxe Hotel
Every year Mt. Pleasant, Iowa is inundated with visitors for one week around Labor Day weekend during the Midwest Old Threshers celebration. The rest of the year they can support a couple of small hotels, but not nearly enough for all the people who would like rooms for that one week. I’ve always wondered why the Laura homesite towns don’t adopt a similar program for festival days. This summer anyway De Smet is.
A group with the Centers for Disease Control will be in De Smet from May through July doing an in-depth health survey of Kingsbury County, but it means a large group of non-Laura people are going to be taking up hotel rooms early this summer. Several pro-tourism groups in De Smet are organizing local people who will be willing to rent out a room overnight. After all rooms from motels and local bed and breakfasts are filled for a certain date, tourists will be referred to rooms on this list. I’m glad they are being proactive on this and you may want to make reservations NOW!
I also hope that other Laura sites (especially Walnut Grove and Pepin) take a good look at this program and how it works and considering adopting a similar program for themselves.
Sarah S. Uthoff, http://trundlebedtales.wordpress.com
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