Road Trip Report, Day Three
CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod hit the road to chart pain at the pump. Here's his Web exclusive daily road diary.
If it's Wednesday, it must be Elkhart, Ind. – the RV capital of the world. To hear the people who manufacture and sell RVs tell it, life couldn't be better. They had their best year in more than a quarter-century in 2004, and this year could be No. 2. Record high gas prices? What record high gas prices?
It's a little different story at the RV parks, when you ask the people driving them. They are often filling 100-gallon tanks. Maybe the higher prices aren't going to prevent them from hitting the road, but it may change the way they drive once they're on the way. As Gary May told us, when he takes his annual drive from Michigan to Florida instead of meandering 50 or 100 miles off his route if he and his wife find something interesting, they'll drive directly.
As for us, we filled up in Howe, Ind., this morning. We paid $2.77 for a gallon of regular. That's a lot closer to New York City prices than what we paid in rural Pennsylvania. Apparently the explanation for such wild swings is a combination of state taxes, regional competition and supply and demand.
Again and again we are finding Americans positioned somewhere between annoyed and enraged - the high gas prices posing something between a nuisance and a hardship. We haven't met anyone making the choice between gas and bread, but the higher prices are having significant effects on the way people drive - and the way they live.