When July 4th falls on a Wednesday, where’s the holiday weekend?
By Chad Umble
Lancaster New Era
July 3, 2007

LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa - The last of the local fireworks are set for tomorrow evening, but for some people they’ll only mark the beginning of the Fourth of July holiday.

With the Fourth falling on a Wednesday this year, people have the option of slicing their week to take a vacation before or after the actual holiday.

For local tourist sites, a mid-week break presents the risk of diluting business, but also a chance of multiplying visitors with two consecutive holiday weekends.

“All things being equal, it is possible to have a good opportunity,” said Chris Barrett, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Barrett added that this year visitors may be tempted to take a mini-vacation instead of just a long weekend.

“When people can swing it, they’ll definitely take a shorter-term vacation, which is good for us,” he said.

Strasburg Rail Road works under the assumption that the mid-week holiday creates two holiday weekends, according to spokeswoman Hope Banner.

“We knew some people were going to front-end their vacation and some people were going to back end it,” she said.

Last weekend, the tourist railroad braced for a holiday crowd by beginning to run trains every half hour instead of every hour, Banner said. They anticipated correctly and saw strong crowds, she said.

Nationally, an estimated 41.1 million Americans will leave home between June 29 and July 8, a slight increase over last year, according to AAA estimates.

Of those planning vacations, 70 percent said they planned to leave over the past weekend, with 16 percent saying they’ll leave Wednesday, according to AAA.

“Most of them have considered the weekend we just passed through as their July 4th weekend,” said Cindy Brough, spokeswoman for AAA Central Penn.

However, Brough added that many travelers who have already left are using a Wednesday off as an excuse to take a week’s vacation, helping push the average vacation to nearly five days.

Brough said travelers are helped by the fact that while average gas prices are higher than they were last year, they’ve dropped nearly 15 cents from the $3-range of late May.

The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas today in the Lancaster area was $2.84, up 5 cents from a year ago, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report.

Locally, the weather is another plus.

Last weekend’s high temperatures were in the upper-70s under mostly clear skies. The forecast for this weekend calls for high temperatures in the low-80s, again under mostly clear skies, according to the Millersville University Weather Information Center Web site.

But for some, good weather and falling gas prices can’t totally compensate for the awkward Wednesday holiday.

“The Fourth of July, because it is in the middle of the week, seems to have diluted things a little bit here,” said Stephen Sikking, general manager of the Eden Resort Inn near Route 30.

Sikking said that while the hotel had a strong weekend, the overall number of Fourth of July guests would probably be down this year.

At Kitchen Kettle in Intercourse, the mid-week holiday will likely cancel out any holiday boost, according to spokeswoman Lisa Horn.

“Normally when it falls in the middle of the week, we don’t see a big effect,” she said.

However, Horn said Kitchen Kettle saw a holiday bump last year when the Tuesday Fourth of July made it easier for vacationers to take a long weekend.

This year, Horn said the two weekends sandwiching the Fourth would likely be “just two typical weekends.”

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