[Newbiesaukee]

We came back to NH about 3 weeks ago and essentially did what is described above. We live in South Florida and have been making the 1700 mile drive about the same way for 16 years with stops at a Holiday Inn in SC and a stop in MD then traveling thru western PA and avoiding NYC.

I have always understood that one needs to have several generations of ancestors buried in NH to really be a local. Still, we are low profile people respectful of the culture and have been very happy with our time here.

It is ironic as we have lived and worked in South Florida for almost 50 years and have seen a radical cultural change primarily with Cuban and other Latino migrations. My Spanish is terrible but we have embraced the changes even though life is different. But many in South Florida do complain about “ruining Florida” and have moved up the FL coast to escape. Not much different than the Flatlanders ruining NH.

Anyway, I had been watching the events in China from the beginning and for the last month or so in FL we were mostly isolating ourselves and slowly accumulating meds, food, cleaning supplies to take with us. We shipped some to NH as our car is not large and we bring the dog.

The Holiday Inn in SC was clean but we sanitized the surfaces as much as possible. We had our own food so stops were only for gas/rest rooms.

We have been self isolating here for 3 weeks now with only one of us going to grocery stores for a weeks worth of food.

And yes, we did return earlier than usual...not so much to escape Covid (which is not possible ) but because we believed it might have been difficult to get out of FL later and we did not want to spend the summer in FL.

We are not naive and expected some in NH would not welcome us. So be it; that is part of human nature; particularly in difficult times.