Our Vermont Travelblog

Higher Gas Prices May Mean Less Driving This Summer - Or Not

Gallup:

With gas prices rising to their highest level ever in the United States, 56% of Americans say that means they will drive less this summer, according to a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey. About half of all Americans also say they have already suffered some hardship because of the higher prices, while about 6 in 10 expect to suffer hardship this summer. But the public is divided about whether the higher prices are a temporary fluctuation or a more permanent change.

The poll, conducted May 21-23, finds that lower-income Americans are more likely to say they will be driving less this summer than are higher-income Americans -- 64% of those earning less than $30,000 a year will cut back, compared with 47% of those earning $75,000 or more.

We do plan to drive this summer, though it is kinda funny that we chose the time when gas is over 2 bucks a gallon to start our 251 tour.

Part of me wants prices to drop because we don't want to spend 30 bucks every time we fill the tank.  On the other hand, it certainly is the price we pay for using our cars for leisure travel.  I just wish more of that money was in the form of taxes that could be used to start an Apollo or Manhattan Project level committment to ensuring our energy indepenence and developing alternative sources.

We're looking to buy a hybrid vehicle sometime soon, now that they're mostly ready for primetime, but that won't happen until autumn at the earliest.  In the meantime, we live with a little guilt about the waste of gas and the increasing expense as we explore our beautiful state...

ntodd

Blogkeeping Notes

We're still tweaking format, some annoying code that's not interpreted in the same way by Netscape and IE, and other little things, so expect to see changes over the coming days and weeks. If anybody has suggestions or comments, we'd love to hear them!

And check this space regularly. It isn't going to be updated as frequently as my main blog, given that this not only involves the virtual world but RL as well, which necessarily constrains us. That said, we are going to hopefully do at least one trip of a few towns every week or two, year round.

Oh, you might have noticed that we didn't start with our town or any in the surrounding climes. We decided that we should save the familiar places for last.

Anyway, welcome, and enjoy!

ntodd

Where Next?

We're hoping to head up to our camp in the Northeast Kingdom later this week, and plan on stopping by Glover (home of Bread and Puppet Theater) on the way. We are also thinking about doing a loop of routes 114, 102 and 105 to hit East Burke, Island Pond, Norton, Averill, West Stewartstown and Colebrook. We'll see!

ntodd

Our First Trip

Sorta spur of the moment today, we decided to go to Cabot (history, demographics). Of course, normally we anticipate doing multiple towns per trip, but we wanted to kick things off with just one place. We chose Cabot because it wasn't overly far a drive, was more or less a central starting point, and was off a state route we've passed by many times, but have never taken. Plus that's where Cabot cheese comes from!

Here we are in Cabot, home of the Huskies, 2003 Division IV boys b-ball champs!

Start Your Engines

Stef and I have wanted to join the 251 Club for quite some time, and finally are taking our first step down the long road of visiting every one of Vermont's towns. More to come...

ntodd