Welcome back to another thrilling edition of Sugar Tree Inn’s blog. I always find Spring an optimistic time of year. Green buds, yellow forsythia, and purple crocus break through my Winter Blues every year, and thank goodness for that. This year more than ever, I need nature’s optimism. Like many of you, we have no idea what the coming days, weeks, months will look like, but we are trying to view it through an optimistic lens. We are doing our part by closing and staying home, and we’d encourage you to do the same if you can. We know it is counter-intuitive for our business, but there’s a bigger picture here.
However, despite our failings at soothsaying, we will continue to plan for our season. With that in mind, I want to briefly talk about our 2020 Season, because this year is still about gratitude and giving. In our last blog, 2019 Review, 2020 Preview, we mentioned we dubbed our 2020 season, the year of Gratitude and Giving. We wanted to kick off our season with flare, our biggest act of gratitude and giving. Then life happened. And while we all sit around self-isolating, our rooms stay empty and our future looks uncertain. But we will continue to plan for a future.
So, if you’ve stayed with us before, then you know that we are located just one mile from the famed Blue Ridge Parkway. Here’s a quick little fun facts blog we wrote about the Parkway if you’re interested in more. In fact, our proximity to the Parkway may be the exact reason you found us and stayed with us, and we are grateful. We are grateful to all the travelers who chose to stay with us during their stint along the Parkway. Or maybe you stayed with us and decided to explore the Parkway during your visit. Either way, we are grateful and as a means of showing our gratitude, if you #bookdirect with us, we will make a donation for every night of your stay to the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation’s Parkway Plus program which funds their ongoing initiatives, such as Trails & Views Forever Fund, Kids in the Park, and The Blue Ridge Music Center Programming. All funds go toward preserving and protecting the Parkway.
Our goal was to raise $1,000 by the end of our 2020 Season, which ends with Sugar Tree Inn’s Thanksgiving, but even through my optimistic lens that goal now seems doubtful. Our new tentative goal for this year is $500.
If you choose to stay will us this year, we challenge you to match our donation if you can. There are two ways you can match: (i) add your donation to your reservation prior to check-out, or (ii) add your donation to our Blue Ridge Parkway display in the Lodge. However, if you can’t stay with us this year, we understand, but you can still help us reach our goal, if you are so inclined, by donating through the Facebook fundraising campaign we’ve established. Even though we don’t yet know when we can open, we’d still like to show our gratitude to the Parkway and give back, if we can, even in some small way. Alternatively, we encourage you to check out the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation and give directly to an initiative that resonates with you. Even if you can’t give monetarily, there are plenty of other ways to give back, from volunteering to event hosting, once we can all travel again, that is.
We are passionate about this fundraising endeavor because as budgets shrink and funding dries up what will happen to this national treasure. Ken Burns said of our National Parks, “that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone.” We want to help with that preservation and we hope you will too. In a world full of tech and noise and pinging and binging, we feel like the Blue Ridge Parkway is our brother in arms and we are grateful to be one of a few bed and breakfasts just off the Parkway.
We’ll keep you posted on our progress in our monthly newsletters. Until next time, we hope you and your family are safe and healthy and we’re looking forward to your stay!
