USA TODAY International Edition
With Americans going out, walking tours pick up pace
CINCINNATI – In front of an eerily quiet and empty stadium plaza, the tour guide tried to help people picture what they would have seen there more tan 160 years earlier. His audience of eight, all on foot, peered over masks at maps as he described hundreds of groceries, saloons, blacksmiths and 100,000 people living across 2 square miles – one of the pre- Civil War USA’s most congested areas. The area had an open secret: It was filled with stations on the Underground Railroad for slaves trying to reach freedom. The tour group was walking those paths.
For many Americans, this is a time of being cooped up, unable to interact with fellow humans and, in many cases, with the landscape. COVID- 19 and its toll – more than 216,000 Americans dead – have kept many away from air travel, cruise ships and crowded beaches. Enter a decidedly unplugged alternative, a very concrete antidote to a more virtual life: the walking tour. Maybe not the most exciting outlet but far better than being surrounded by the same four walls.
“Our mental health matters also, and it’s very important for us ... when we’re really feeling extremely alienated from each other and feeling trapped in our homes, to walk our streets, in the safest way possible,” said Rebecca Manski of Social Justice Tours in New York City.
Such tours have picked up in popularity for people seeking outdoor social activity while maintaining health safety precautions and staying in small groups. The Cincinnati walking tour is among several offered by the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum. The goal: to offset a pandemic- abbreviated baseball season that didn’t allow fans in the ballpark.
Bob Doherty, 61, said that under normal circumstances, his family would have been inside the stadium that Sunday afternoon, rooting for the Reds in their playoff race against the Chicago White Sox. The tour, which combined the roots of professional baseball and the city’s abolitionist history, “is the next best thing,” he said.
“It’s refreshing to get outside and be with family,” said Mack Doherty, 28, in a group of five, including his father, his sister and her boyfriend. Doherty’s girlfriend, Avery Helwig, 28, concurred: “So nice to get out.”
Manski’s New York group, like many tour companies, halted in- person tours as the pandemic took hold in March. She said the jarring sound of ambulance sirens as COVID- 19 victims were rushed to hospitals added to the obstacles of education- focused tours. She shifted to virtual offerings, and other groups offer small, private group tours or self- guided tours with audio and GPS information provided.
“It’s an interesting time to be in the travel industry,” said Riley Pearce of Berkeley, California- based Backroads Tours. “Nobody knows what people are going to want, because people don’t really know what they want yet.”
Pandemic worry has reduced participants on Backroads’ walking, hiking and bike tours by as much as 90%, so it’s rebuilding business with family and private group expeditions that take a variety of approaches.
The Reds Hall of Fame Museum in the city that pioneered professional baseball in 1869 has also done walking tours about the 1919 “Black Sox” World Series betting scandal and the former Riverfront Stadium that hosted the “Big Red Machine” teams of the 1970s. For fall, it launched “Brunch, Brews and Baseball,” which includes a brewery tour.
Executive Director Rick Walls said the nonprofit museum wasn’t able to conduct popular ballpark tours this summer or reap the merchandise purchases by fans coming to games in the adjacent stadium.
“It’s been a pretty big hit,” Walls said. The ballpark tours resumed now that the Reds’ season has ended.
The museum replaced in- person autograph sessions and discussions for its 5,000- strong membership base with Zoom calls with former Reds stars who Walls said “really stepped up” to help with free or discounted autographing of items for the museum to sell. Like other visitor- dependent businesses, the museum hopes for a normal 2021, but it’s making contingency plans in case the pandemic continues.
“We will be better coming out of this,” Walls said. “We’ll have created some new ways we operate internally, and ultimately, we’ll have a successful season.”
Pearce said there is a lot of pent- up demand to visit places such as Grand Teton National Park because they remind people that although “modern life seems totally overwhelmed by COVID,” there are still spectacular sites, some thousands of years old, that have been untouched by the pandemic.
The walking tours are in small groups for now, but they could become very big when the world comes back.
“I think that’s the same thing that a lot of people are craving right now,” Pearce said. “When everything else feels totally upside down, going into nature and going for a hike, sleeping under the stars; it’s all a reminder that there is just this incredible world out there to explore. And it’s going to be waiting for us, as soon we’re ready.”