Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Holiday travel poll

What are you doing for the holiday this weekend? Visiting friends, traveling with family, staying home? From what I've been reading, airplane travel in the U.S. for this holiday weekend is up 6% over last year. High gas prices don't seem to be affecting the amount of car travel over last year, at least in our area.



Did the environmental impact of travel via air or otherwise influence your plans this year at all?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nope, the environment didn't influence my travel choice, my lack of family did. But hey, at least I'm honest about it!

I just finished making gluten free cornbread for Dan's cornbread stuffin'. And I made my green bean salad... so all that's left to do is that pesky turkey.

Anonymous said...

LOL! I'm with you "rach". Holidays are hard without family - but you make your own family. That's what I've had to learn to do. And to work on keeping an attitude of greatfullness even when things aren't going exactly the way you thought in life.

But we are a bunch of freakin' homebodies, ain't we? :)

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately I live in Massachusetts, my 80+ year old grandparents live in Arkansas, and my parents live in Georgia. My environmental compromise, such as it is, is to fly to Arkansas and stay for as long as I can, while having my parents drive over to meet me here, thus saving an extra plane trip to see them. When I'm home in MA, I drive as little as possible and generally have a low-impact life. But since I'm not willing to live near my family (sorry! just can't deal with Southern heat!!) or forgo seeing them, nor can I take extra time off work to drive my car for two days, flying it is. If I could afford carbon offsets on top of the plane ticket price, I'd do that -- but alas!

Miss Sub said...

baby nephew out of state influenced my travel plans. BABY! : )

Ashley // Our Little Apartment said...

car trip that is usually 3 or 3.5 hours was 4.5 hours tonight!

gah! holiday traffic :(

am definitely thankful to be safe and home though

Jane said...

Well, I stayed home and but my in-laws flew across country for the first time, so we are not helping global warming this year.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Theresa said...

I'm Canadian but voted anyway - looks like I didn't skew the vote though!

Also, just a reminder that Friday the 23rd is "Buy Nothing Day" in the US and Canada, the anti-consumerism day promoted by Adbusters magazine.

A happy and safe Thanksgiving to all!

Anonymous said...

We were slightly influenced by enviromental impact but our first consideration was,
We just couldn't afford to be spending the extra for gas to travel this year. So we stayed home and had a VERY quiet thanksgiving. First relaxing Thanksgiving in years! Stayed in our PJ's most of the day-after we ate we went for a walk out in the chilly evening air. Played a few board games with several glowing candles going....wow I think we could possibly get into the habit of not being able to afford gas to travel on the holidays!

Unknown said...

I flew home this year... from New Zealand. I feel awful about the three flights I had to take, a 1 hour, a 12 hour, and 2 hour fligh. But I had to come home, my visa was about to expire and I'm staying here for at least the next two or three years, during which I bike and run to get around when possible.

Laura said...

My boyfriend and I flew from Seattle, WA to Ft. Lauderdale, FL for the Turkey Day visit. I don't buy offsets because my gut tells me they are bogus. I think it is much more efficient to send my money straight to the source that I want to support not "by funding industrial efficiency and renewable energy projects such as wind farms" as Terrapass says I can do by purchasing the $9.95 Puddle Jumper package on their website.

We are 99% sure that we will travel by train in the future. Even if it is more money I consider it a win because we would be voting with our dollars and saying "Hey, forget the stinky airplanes...I want more train transportation options! :)"

(I just threw this together a second ago so please don't let it discourage you if it doesn't look ideal.) Here is a super duper quick and dirty breakdown of the comparison:

Thanksgiving 2007~ SEA to FLA

>7 days total, including 1 day each way for travel by air.
>Flight cost: 1000.00 for 2 adult coach tickets. (note, we did not travel on Black Wednesday.)
>30.00 x 2 for taxis to and fro the airport (buses weren't running at the times we needed.)
>5 days to visit
>carbon emissions=many many many pounds (Terrapass says 2115 lbs)
>total cost: $1060.00 and a big load of bad karma

Thanksgiving in October 2008~ SEA to FLA

>21 days total, including 4 days each way for travel by train.
>Train cost: 2063.00 for 2 adult sleeper car(“roomette”) tickets. (SEA to Chicago to DC to Ft Lauderdale and reverse)
>no cab fare because the train runs through downtown Seattle.
>13 days to visit in October not during a 'normal' holiday. (dates randomly chosen. would have done Thankgiving week 2008 but Amtrak's website does not show those dates yet.)
>carbon emissions=much much much less
>total cost: $2063.00

Things to figure out:

>What would happen to our pup? Currently she would have to be kenneled or stay (a long time) with friends. Amtrak does not allow dogs.
>How much time could I/we feasibly take off work?
>Is there any way to lower the cost of the dang Amtrak ticket? AAA discount only gets us $100 total off two adult tickets.
>How will the prices change if we wanted to travel during the typical 2008 holidays?

Holy spaghetti, this turned out to be a really long comment! Hope it is helpful. :)