Rising Gas Prices Could Affect Vacation Plans
BOSTON (CBS) - Going to the gas pump just gets more and more painful and every week we inch closer to the$4 dollar a gallon mark. While we still may be below the national average the real cost of rising gas may be keeping us close to home.
Take friends Armands Ramolins and Mara Veidis, they've chosen to stay local at Hale Reservation in Westwood- instead of hitting the road.
"We probably would make more trips together if gas prices were a little more reasonable," explains Veidis.
WBZ-TV's Diana Perez reports.
And when they do drive Ramolins says they try to save every penny, "we do go up to New Hampshire and sometimes take two cars but this time we're only going to take one car."
Its not that they don't want to travel, the issue they say is that the current gas prices are hold them back. In Massachusetts the average for regular is $3.67, up three cents from last week, 90 cents from a year ago.
Still, AAA's spokesperson Mary Maguire says we're far from the $4 dollar mark. She says the prediction is that prices here won't reach $3.75 until Memorial Day weekend.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Lana Jones talked with an independent gas station owner.
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Plus she says it's not such a bad thing that there are so many destinations a short distance away, "we have cape cod southern New Hampshire, southern Maine, New York City, Newport, and the beaches of Rhode Island to name just a few. All within half a tank of gas, in some cases a quarter of a tank of gas."
Still worry lingers that this could be a repeat of 2008 when gas stayed at 4 dollars or that the small strides the economy has made could be lost
"I do think that higher gas prices presents a hardships on all of us and that has to have an impact on the amt of disposable income and dollars that all of us have to put back into the economy," says Maguire.
AAA says while many families have decided to stay home they don't believe its the return of the "staycation" there is still interest in driving long distances, mainly because the price of airfare has also gone up.
