Despite gas prices, Americans hit the road...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/23/national/main4124898.shtml

Despite Gas Prices, Americans Hit The Road
With Prices At The Pump Topping $4 A Gallon, More Than 38 Million Americans Are Traveling This Memorial Day Weekend

NEW YORK, May 23, 2008

At the start of the biggest holiday weekend since gasoline price-hikes moved into the fast lane, gas is up more than 90 cents since February. It jumped another nickel overnight, to a nationwide average $3.88 a gallon.

The cost of fuel is keeping some Americans closer to home, and a AAA survey finds the number of Memorial Day travelers is down for the first time since 2002.

Still, nearly 38 million Americans are heading out of town, and paying the price, reports CBS News Business Correspondent Anthony Mason.

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This Memorial Day weekend is one of the biggest on the NASCAR calendar, Mason reports.

It's the running of the Coca-Cola 600 in Concord, N.C. Since last week, fans have been pulling in from all over the country. Steve Biddle drove his motor home more than 1,100 miles from Enid, Okla. But this year, his trip cost him more than $1,000, with diesel fuel averaging more than $4 a gallon.

"About a buck-sixty higher than last year," Biddle lamented.

"Does that hurt?" Mason asked.

"It all hurts," Biddle said.

No other major American sport is hurt more by high gas prices than NASCAR, where fans travel 400 miles round-trip on average to see a race. But those aren't the only Americans hurting at the pumps.

As consumers began hitting the road Friday for the Memorial Day weekend, they faced the sobering reality that it now costs $87 to fill a Ford Explorer SUV, up $14 from last year, and $72 to fill a mid-sized Honda Accord, up $12.

That's because gas prices, which took another jump higher overnight, are up nearly 20 percent, or 65 cents a gallon, over the past year, to average nearly $3.88 a gallon nationally. But unlike this time last year, when gas prices were at their peak for 2007, pump prices now show no signs of halting their daily assault on the record books.

"Four dollars (a gallon) is a done deal now," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill. "We could go significantly above that."

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I live in a resort area in the Sierras, and I'm not seeing much, if any, decline in the number tourists, motor homes, power boats, quads, dirt bikes etc. It does seem like they're not buying as much merchandise, but they're still packing the restaurants. I find it surprising, but then again I'm not driving any less than I was when gas was two dollars.... I know for sure that if I was looking for a new truck I'd be looking at hybrids, and I have been seeing more and more new hybrids, compacts and electrics, but I have a friend who just bought a brand new full size standard truck last week. He said to me, kind of sheepishly, "I know it's not very good for the climate, but I got a great deal on it......."

j/k.

but i did, and do have to work. I suppose i would have walked it i had to.
dp

to see all of the cars on the road this weekend. Out of my apartment window I could see I-90 full of slowly moving traffic until last night. This waste of gas needs to stop. It sucks to see something so depressing from your home when you're trying to sleep.