PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The kickoff to the summer recreation season is underway, and some businesses are benefitting from the beautiful weather.
After a long winter of COVID-19 restrictions, folks are eagerly heading to the region’s outdoor stores to stock up for their getaways.
Arsalan Shah and his wife are eager to get out into the water.
“We’ve been cooped up all year from corona and the weather, it’s finally nice weather so we just want to get out in the summer and just enjoy and get back to normal life,” he said.
They stopped by Portland Kayak Company to pick up a life jacket.
“They are local, So, We just wanted to support our local community,” Shah said.
Jonathan Bolin, who manages the Next Adventure in Sandy said this Memorial Day weekend marks the traditional kickoff to summertime, which means they anticipate a lot of traffic. People were already streaming into the store to pick up camping and backpacking gear this weekend.
“With memorial day weekend, we’ll be staffed heavily to make sure we can help customers out so we are really hoping it will be a busy one, we’ll have a pop-up tent with used gear for sale on the deck,” he said.
Business this past year has been surprisingly steady, Bolin added
“This year strangely enough I think because covid put a lot of restrictions on people being able to go to concerts or go to bars, it’s been a successful year for us.
Bolin said he wants to remind hikers who might be heading to Mount Hood that the mountain does have a good snowpack this year. He said that those who are heading out there might run into pockets of snow and ice so might want to consider bringing snow cleats, which can be rented at Next Adventure.