FAYETTEVILLE, WV (WOAY) – Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer and tourism season for Ace Adventure Gear in Fayetteville. That’s also the case for Wild Mountain Soap.
Both businesses were briefly affected by the weekend storms.
“Since we are the main gear shop for boaters around it’s super exciting to see all our friends walk through the door and they just got back the last couple of days,” said Ace Adventure Resort retail operations manager Liz Curry. “And then added to normally the busyness that Memorial Day, the long weekend brings. It kind of is that like first vibrant weekend of the year.”
Things looked good at the start of Memorial Day weekend but once the storms rolled through many Fayetteville businesses lost power. Over at Wild Mountain Soap Company, business was steady on Saturday, the storm hit Sunday and knocked them out on Monday. Now they’re back and excited for the summer to get rolling. Co-owner Mary Peelish says the store kind of sells itself.
“It’s soap and everybody needs soap and hopefully uses it,” said Peelish. “We know about the products because we make them and we have a wide variety: from soaps, lotions and natural deodorants. We have a muscle rub, we have a bug spray. We do a little bit of everything.”
Ace had to cut their weekend short.
“It’s always a tough decision, but we were closed from Sunday afternoon all the way through Monday because we didn’t have any power,” Curry said.
People are in town happily vacationing when sometimes they run across Wild Mountain Soap in the West Virginia State Parks.
“They’ll come and want to bring home bigger versions. We’ve had people drive from Black Waterfalls to our shop just to get soap,” said Peelish. “And that’s a good thing because there’s a lot of things to do in this area — with the shopping in Fayetteville and the restaurants in Fayetteville and the national park. ”
It hurts businesses when Mother Nature hits on such a big, busy weekend. The second or third-time power was down in the past few months, prompting Ace to close shop.
“Always frustrating ‘cause those weekends are really important this time of year,” Curry said. “But we are like excited because Memorial Day weekend kicked off so well for us. We’re hopeful that maybe that’s foretelling a good movement this season.”
According to Peelish, it’s nice that state parks that are a ways away can transport people from there to Fayetteville.
“And maybe they’ll decide to vacation here next year,” she said.
