South Dakota Thanksgiving Travel Impacted Far Less than Some Other States

We've made it to the other side of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and it's safe to say that for a lot of us, this turkey day experience was like no other before or hopefully ever again thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Increased fears of spreading coronavirus forced a good number of people across America to either seriously curtail or outright cancel their Thanksgiving plans with friends and family in 2020.

The travel website Arrivalist has crunched the holiday road trip numbers and discovered that journeys of 50 miles or more over the Thanksgiving weekend were down by more than a third this year (35%).

That's the national average, but the numbers vary widely from state to state.

In South Dakota, long turkey day travels were down nearly 28 percent, but that's actually one of the lowest decreases in the country - eighth overall.

LEAST IMPACTED THANKSGIVING TRAVEL STATES (Arrivalist)

1. Hawaii +7.6%
2. Utah -13.9%
3. Nevada -20.4%
4. California -22.7%
5. Florida -22.8%
6. Montana -24.5%
7. Idaho -27.1%
8. South Dakota -27.6%
9. South Carolina -28.6%
10. Wyoming -28.7%

One region of the country saw the biggest cutbacks in holiday travel.

Of the 11 states that saw road trips dip by 50 percent or more, most are in the Northeast.

MOST IMPACTED THANKSGIVING TRAVEL STATES (Arrivalist)

1. Vermont -66.4%
2. Rhode Island -64.9%
3. Connecticut -57.6%
4. Massachusetts -52.7%
5. New Hampshire -52.6%
6. Maryland -52.4%
7. New Jersey -52.2%
8. Illinois -52.1
9. Ohio -52.0%
10. Maine -50.6%
11. Michigan -50.3%

The 35 percent drop in Thanksgiving travel nationwide was in stark contrast to our two most recent long weekends - Fourth of July and Labor Day - which both saw travel levels at or above 2019 totals.