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CONCORD, NH – One of the busiest holiday weekends of the year is coming and New Hampshire is getting ready, although nobody has any idea what “busiest” means right now.
“The New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism is not forecasting visitation for the 2020 fall season. Similar to summer, there are many unknowns and variables with the potential to impact visitation that it would be difficult to project what visitation might look like for the season ahead,” wrote Kris Neilsen, communications manager for the tourism division in response to a Monitor query.
The Division of Travel and Tourism usually predicts the number of visitors who will come into the state during periods such as Labor Day weekend. Last year they expected 650,000.
People are also uncertain at the Department of Transportation.
“My best guess is that the numbers for this weekend will be slightly elevated from those of the past few weekends. However, I think that they will be lower than compared to past years,” wrote Eileen Meaney, chief communications officer for the department.
A sense of New Hampshire visitation comes from the state’s EZPass stations on its interstate highways and turnpikes.
Weekly EZPass traffic numbers plummeted when the stay-at-home orders hit, from about 2 million paid trips each week in February to barely 900,000 in April.
Traffic counts have since rebounded, but not entirely.
All summer the state’s EZPass number have been between 17 and 21 percent lower than the equivalent week last year – roughly 2.3 million trips a week vs. 2.8 million last year.
The question is how that pattern of 500,000 fewer trips a week will reflect on the Labor Day holiday.
Compounding the uncertainty is the way outdoor activities in New Hampshire such as hiking trails, parks and swimming holes have been overwhelmed by visitors to a level never seen before. The U.S. Forest Service and New Hampshire Fish and Game have been scrambling all summer to deal with overflowing porta-potties, cars parked by the scores or even hundreds along the Kancamagus Highway because parking lots are full, plus inexperienced folks who need help in the woods or mountains, and don’t follow rules such as carrying out their trash.
Unless the weather is bad, Labor Day weekend usually sees more outdoor activity than other summertime weekends. If that holds true this summer as well, expect to see a lot of frazzled park rangers as of Tuesday.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
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