Foliage season draws scores of visitors — and tour buses — to the Upper Valley, with the 612-acre Quechee Gorge State Park and the Route 4 bridge overlooking the Ottauquechee River a particularly prime attraction. The visitor center there greets more than 100,000 visitors a year, many of them international, according to the Hartford Area Chamber of Commerce.
At Quechee Gorge Gifts and Sportswear, 16 buses a day were coming through heading into the Columbus Day weekend, longtime owner Kip Miller said Thursday evening.
“It looks like a little better-than-average year,” said Miller, who has been at the store for 40 years. “We’re all very busy — like every other place we’re about two people short from what we should be — so it’s quite hard on people who are working, but we’ll get through it.”
Miller said about 60% of the store’s business comes between mid-September and the end of October, and he said tourists have been talking positively about this year’s foliage. “I’m hearing excellent reports from people on tours,” he said.
In New Hampshire, foliage is also a key economic driver. The average traveler spends $88 per day in New Hampshire, according to the New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism Development, and some 68,000 jobs across the state are supported by tourism.