ANCHESTER, N.H. - This city unplugged, unzipped, and exhaled yesterday.
Thousands of campaign workers and media types fled this mill town for home or the next primary states of South Carolina and New York, leaving behind little but the voters, lawn signs, and another layer of political history.
Oh, and colored confetti is still encrusted in the bright white snow outside Bedford Town Hall, where Senator John McCain of Arizona held his last rally.
Down the street, at the Bedford Village Inn, NBC's electronic equipment was stacked inside a gazebo, waiting to be loaded onto a truck and hauled away for another four years.
Inside the Wayfarer Inn's bar, which has legendary status on the campaign trail, things were so quiet you could actually hear a Van Morrison song playing softly overhead. Outside, a forklift whined as it placed trunks of TV gadgetry into an 18-wheeler.
At the airport, limousines lined up at the single terminal's curb, disgorging tired passengers, who ran to catch a charter or US Airways flight. And at the airport's Hertz car rental office, agents were too busy to answer the phone.
Hotel rooms emptied out, and their prices deflated to normal levels.
The Center of New Hampshire Holiday Inn, which had been booked years ahead for the primary, reported 200 checkouts as workers began the long process of cleaning rooms, removing television cables, and putting furniture back in its customary places.
Restaurants were also recovering from a weeklong surge in business.
''We're busy all the time,'' said a weary Edward Aloise, owner of Cafe Pavone. ''But the surge was quite remarkable and it really put us over the top.''
He said his regular customers are happy to have the place to themselves again, although the restaurant gave preference to locals throughout the primary influx, even on Saturday night, when Senator Bob Kerrey, the Nebraska Democrat, and some CNN luminaries had to be turned away.
''It was pretty much a circus,'' Aloise said.
Parking, like a seat in a favorite cafe, also became plentiful again on Manchester's Elm Street, the main thoroughfare and home to many campaign headquarters, including Vice President Al Gore's.
But not much longer.
That office, along with 10 other Gore storefronts in New Hampshire, is closing.
''We have no use for them after today,'' said Douglas Hattaway, the campaign's New Hampshire press secretary. ''Resources really have to be focused.''
Hattaway was surrounded yesterday by crumpled trash bags and pillows piled next to luggage. Thirty phones, about to be disconnected, sat on computer boxes. And makeshift walls, built ''when it was 102 degrees,'' were being ripped down with a crow bar. Signs were being recycled and shipped to other states while aides were trying to figure out the logistics of how to return 29 rented vans used in the get-out-the-vote effort.
Glassy-eyed volunteers stared at a soap opera on the same TV that had broadcast Gore's victory speech on Tuesday night. It was the same room where a dozen volunteers slept on the floor, unable to find a hotel room.
But it wasn't so bad.
''Picking up the trash is easier to do,'' Hattaway said, ''when you're picking up after a win.''
