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Show Tourist count soars on holiday weekend The tourists season got an excellent start as the Dinosaur Visitor's Center and Museum of Natural History both reported record visitors during the Memorial holiday. "It was the busiest Memorial Day holiday ever," said Denny Davies, Dinosaur Visitor's Center. "We had 30 fewer people than our busiest day ever. We were wall to wall with people," he added. The Saturday before Memorial Day, 1,473 visited the quarry. Sunday 2,291 people were there,, and Monday, 1,516 went to the visitor's center. Davies also said that Tuesday after Memorial Day was a good day with 300 people reported before noon. With the good Memorial Day weekend, the May visitors are 13 percent per-cent higher than last year, Davies said . about the month's visitors to the quarry. At the Dinosaur Museum there were i,sw) reported over the Memorial Day holiday. The museum's visitors for May are up 200 over last year, officials report. The 50 cent admission at the museum man t seem to turn anyone away, museum officials said. The Dinosaur Museum charges 50 cents for entry to people over 11 and under 65 years old. . If the Memorial Day tourists count is any indication of what the rest of the summer tourist court will be, Vernal may be better than national predictions for 1982. "Research by the USTOC indicates that we can expect only moderate growth over 1981 figures," says a periodic publication of the National Tour Brokers Association, read to the Vernal Area Chamber of Commerce "Tuesday. "As you may have guessed, the USTOC is pointing the finger at our currently cur-rently slow economy as the culprit," said the Chamber's executive vice president Dwight Wetenkamp, quoting the publication. "The general inflation rate has cool ed down to a manageable 6.8 percent annual rate, and Americans' incomes have risen faster than the rise in costs of travel for the past year," the publication publica-tion says on an optimistic note. |