Fuel Costs Keeping Road Trips Down

Campgrounds all over Kentucky and Indiana are full, or booking up fast. Audubon and Lincoln parks have no vacancies for the memorial day weekend, but record fuel costs could make for fewer road trips and campers in the future. Randell Trent and his wife use their RV to relax, get outdoors and visit family. Right now, they are camped out at Audubon State Park. Last Friday, they drove from Huntsville Alabama to Henderson Kentucky in their ten miles per gallon RV. "It holds115 gallons, $400.50 to fill up. We had intentions of going to Kansas City but we changed our minds" "A lot of your camper culture, they tend to travel from place to place and with the high gas prices it would make more sense for them to travel to one place and stay longer." "Ive already had people come for 14 days" With fuel prices rising dramatically over the winter campers are starting to realize the cost of their pastime. "Well still make trips but a lot shorter." Because people are traveling less, Kellen hopes tri-state campers will take advantage of the parks low prices and educational programs. "Hopefully we see a trend where local people will come to us instead of driving other places." With the fuel crisis, state parks throughout the area are rethinking their marketing strategy to target regional rather than national visitors, that could be just the ticket for people like the Trents who are looking for shorter trips. AAA estimates that just under 38 million people will be travel 50 or more miles this weekend. Thats down nine per cent from last year.