There’s Nothing To Do Here
I hear some version of this all the time.
“There’s nothing to do here.”
If you live in Front Royal or Warren County, you've probably heard it too.
Maybe you've even said it.
There's nowhere to go. Nothing ever happens. You have to drive somewhere else if you want to do anything.
And yet, every year, people travel from across Virginia, around the country and even around the world to spend their vacation here.
Think about that for a minute.
People save money, take time off work, pack their cars, book hotel rooms and Airbnbs, and drive hundreds—or sometimes thousands—of miles to spend a few days in the place where some of us insist there is nothing to do.
There's an interesting disconnect there.
And I don't think it's unique to Front Royal.
Sometimes the hardest place to appreciate is the place you call home.
Visitors See Our Community Differently
Imagine arriving in Front Royal for the first time.
You wake up in the morning and drive onto Skyline Drive.
You stop at overlooks and take pictures of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
You hike a trail in Shenandoah National Park.
Maybe you see a black bear or a deer.
You spend the afternoon floating down the Shenandoah River.
Later, you walk along Main Street, browse some locally owned shops, grab something to eat and maybe stop for a beer or a glass of wine.
The next day you visit Skyline Caverns.
Maybe you go horseback riding.
Maybe you visit a winery.
Maybe you go fishing.
Maybe you drive through the countryside simply because it's beautiful.
To a visitor, that can be a pretty great weekend.
To someone who has lived here for 30 years?
"Yeah, but we've already done all that."
And I think that's where the disconnect begins.
Familiarity Has a Way of Making Things Invisible
When something extraordinary is part of your everyday life, eventually it stops feeling extraordinary.
People travel across the country to see the Blue Ridge Mountains.
We see them while driving to Walmart.
People plan vacations around visiting Shenandoah National Park.
We drive past the entrance on the way to work.
People rent cabins so they can spend a weekend near the Shenandoah River.
We cross it without giving it much thought.
Visitors stop on Main Street and take pictures of buildings we've walked past hundreds of times.
That's human nature.
Familiarity changes our perception of value.
The same thing happens in other destinations.
Someone living at the beach probably doesn't wake up every Saturday morning thinking, I can't believe I get to go to the beach today.
Someone living in Orlando probably isn't spending every weekend at Disney World.
Someone living near the Grand Canyon eventually has to go grocery shopping too.
When you live somewhere, life takes over.
Work. Bills. School. Errands. Laundry. Dinner.
The destination becomes home.
And home rarely feels like vacation.
Maybe "Nothing to Do" Means Something Else
I also think when people say there's nothing to do here, they often don't literally mean nothing.
What they may actually mean is:
"There aren't enough things here that I personally want to do."
That's a completely fair conversation.
Someone in their early twenties may want nightlife.
A family with young children may want more indoor activities.
Teenagers may want entertainment options that don't require driving to Winchester.
Someone else may want more restaurants, live music, shopping, recreation or community events.
Those are legitimate wants.
And we absolutely should continue looking for ways to add experiences and improve quality of life for the people who live here.
But that's different from saying there's nothing to do.
There is quite a bit to do.
It just may not always be what you want to do.
Visitors Have Something Locals Don't: Intention
There's another difference between residents and tourists that I think matters.
Visitors arrive with the intention of doing something.
They've already decided:
We're going to explore.
So they search Google.
They look at tourism websites.
They read travel blogs.
They ask the hotel staff for recommendations.
They search for hiking trails, restaurants, shops, attractions and events.
Then they go do them.
How often do we do that in our own hometown?
Probably not very often.
Imagine pretending for one Saturday that you'd never been to Front Royal before.
Search online for "things to do in Front Royal."
Pick three things you've either never done or haven't done in years.
Go downtown.
Walk into a store you've never visited.
Eat somewhere you haven't tried.
Take a drive down a road you normally have no reason to travel.
Walk a trail.
Visit an attraction.
Attend an event you'd normally scroll past on Facebook.
You might be surprised by what you find.
We Tend to Measure Ourselves Against Bigger Places
There's another trap communities like ours fall into.
We compare ourselves to places we aren't.
Why don't we have the shopping Winchester has?
Why don't we have the restaurants Northern Virginia has?
Why don't we have the entertainment options of a larger city?
The simple answer is that we're not a larger city.
Front Royal isn't going to have the entertainment infrastructure of Washington, D.C.
Nor should that necessarily be the goal.
The things that make this community attractive are often precisely the things those larger places don't have.
You can leave downtown Front Royal and be standing beside the Shenandoah River within minutes.
You can enter Shenandoah National Park almost immediately.
You can be surrounded by mountains and countryside without driving for hours.
You can walk into a locally owned business and actually meet the person who owns it.
Those things have value too.
In fact, they're exactly what many visitors are coming here to experience.
But We Shouldn't Use Tourism as an Excuse to Stop Improving
None of this means we should look around and say:
"Visitors like it, so everything is fine."
Absolutely not.
We should want more things to do.
We should want more events.
More experiences.
More restaurants.
More recreational opportunities.
More reasons to spend an evening downtown.
More activities for families.
More options for teenagers and young adults.
More connections between our river, downtown, trails, parks, businesses and attractions.
There is enormous room to improve.
But improvement starts with understanding what you already have.
You can't build effectively on assets you refuse to recognize as assets.
Tourism Can Teach Us Something About Ourselves
I've written before about the connection between tourism, quality of life and economic development.
This is another piece of that puzzle.
Visitors are essentially giving us feedback about our community every time they choose to come here.
They're telling us:
There is something here worth experiencing.
Our job should be to understand what they're seeing.
Why did they come?
What did they enjoy?
What surprised them?
What did they wish we had?
Where did they spend money?
What would make them stay another night?
And perhaps just as importantly:
How can we take the things visitors already love about this community and make them even better for the people who live here?
Because the best tourism investments often shouldn't just benefit tourists.
Trails benefit residents.
Parks benefit residents.
Events benefit residents.
Restaurants benefit residents.
A thriving downtown benefits residents.
River access benefits residents.
Public spaces benefit residents.
The goal isn't to build a community for tourists.
It's to build a great community that tourists also want to experience.
Try Seeing Home Through Someone Else's Eyes
There's an interesting exercise I think every community should occasionally try.
Look at your hometown like a tourist.
Forget what isn't here for a moment.
Look at what is.
The entrance to one of America's most visited national parks.
The northern end of Skyline Drive.
The Shenandoah River.
The Blue Ridge Mountains.
Hiking.
Fishing.
Paddling.
Caverns.
Wineries.
Local restaurants.
Small businesses.
History.
Scenic drives.
Festivals and community events.
A traditional downtown sitting in the middle of all of it.
Could we have more?
Absolutely.
We should want more.
But there's a big difference between saying:
"We need more things to do."
and saying:
"There's nothing to do here."
One recognizes an opportunity.
The other ignores what we already have.
Maybe visitors see something we've stopped noticing.
And maybe every once in a while, we should put down the grocery list, forget about the errands, and experience Front Royal and Warren County the way someone visiting for the first time does.
We might discover there's more to do here than we thought.
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