Eric Gongora holds his daughter Audrey, 2, as he looks at their self-shot picture with a cardboard cutout of Dolly Parton on Thursday morning. Travelers stopped at the Tennessee Visitor’s Center on Interstate 75 on Thursday morning.Area gas pricesGas prices rose by nearly 3 cents a gallon between Wednesday and Thursday and are on the rise across the region, but experts don’t expect them to have a major effect on travel plans.* Atlanta: $3.76, up nearly 25 cents from last week.* Chattanooga: $3.61, up 13 cents from last week.* Knoxville: $3.66, up 20 cents from last week.* Nashville: $3.66, up 21 cents from last week.Source: AAA Fuel Gauge ReportTRAVEL PREDICTIONSAAA Auto Club expects 33 million people to travel more than 50 miles this holiday weekend by automobile, airplane or other means of travel, nearly a 3 percent bump from 2011. Locally, those numbers are expected to increase even higher:• Tennessee – 641,000, a 3.6 percent increase• Georgia – 901,000, a 3 percent increase• Alabama numbers unavailableSource: AAA
Labor Day travelers began trickling through Chattanooga’s Interstate 75 rest stop Thursday morning, the first of what will likely be more than 1,000 visitors making a pit stop over the three-day weekend.
Cheryl Gongora, her husband and 2-year-old daughter were three of those travelers, headed north from Atlanta to visit family for the weekend.
“We chose today because we think [Friday] might be a little more busy,” she said as her husband lifted their laughing daughter over his shoulder. “We’re potty training, so we’ll be making all the stops.”
Fuel price watch group GasBuddy.com anticipates this weekend will bring the highest gas prices ever for this time of year. But despite projections and a sharp jump in gas prices over the last week, travel experts expect Gongora will be right.