Vacations and recreation

Driving through the Upper Peninsula drives home how central recreation is to the place. Without it most of the place would be subsistence hunting/fishing, since the ore and big trees are mostly gone and most of the soil is pretty lousy. Most boats aren't for professional fishing or transport, but for visitors.

So what do people go to do? Fish. Hunt. Travel around in boats. Walk long distances. Live in primitive conditions for a while.

Making a living by hunting or fishing isn't all that easy, as the older Yoopers and the Ojibwe before them could testify. It was hard work, and even with modern tools it takes time and effort (unless you bait the deer). So tens of thousands of us take a vacation from our hard jobs by doing a different hard job.

Not all our recreations are like that: some are "sit and watch" recreations (watching the boats roll in, watching the Brewers lose, watching reality shows or watching an opera), and others are contests (business league softball games and so on). But sometimes we try to relax by doing completely different work--as in the dude ranches.

Not just any kind of work, but either something exotic (cowboy or astronaut) or something that we can point to afterwards and say "I did that". Sweeping floors is not going to attract vacationers, nor the inhuman job of bolting the rear flange on pump after pump after pump.

But there's probably room (and maybe even a thriving market I haven't heard about) for people paying to spend a week in a woodshop or machinist shop with some pros helping them make something. I do kludge carpentry--better since I invested in a second-hand table saw, but nowhere near what I could do with the space and proper tools (and that wouldn't be as good as the pros). But I haven't the budget or space for a good setup. I don't think I'd shell out for a week with good advisers and use of a good rig, but then I'm not that interested in spending big bucks on a good fishing boat either--but somebody's buying them.