After driving more than 14 hours on a return trip from visiting relatives in Athens, Ga., the Daniel family got out of the rain and sat down to a table of fried seafood dinners yesterday afternoon at an Interstate 95 rest stop in Harford County.
They just beat other motorists returning from Thanksgiving visits who were rushing to grab a spot in growing lines in front of the fast-food restaurants at Maryland House near Aberdeen.
The family of five from the Philadelphia suburb of Sicklerville, N.J., has made it a habit of stopping at the travel plaza on road trips along the East Coast.
"It's convenient," said Maria Daniel, an attorney and professor. "There are so many options. You can gas up. It also gives us hope that we are close to home."
The Daniel family was among the throngs of Americans who hit the road for Thanksgiving. Even though gasoline prices have dropped 52 percent since mid-July, officials from AAA Mid-Atlantic said they expected travel Thanksgiving week to be the lowest since 2002. But many motorists interviewed yesterday - including the Daniel family - said that lower gas prices provided an extra incentive to travel.
"The gas prices are outstanding," said Valdon Daniel II, a middle school mathematics teacher, who said he paid $1.59 a gallon for gas in North Carolina.
Maryland House officials said the number of visitors - 19,000 - this Thanksgiving holiday matched last year.
"Most people are saying how good it was to get out of the house," said Vern Bingham, general manager of Maryland House, which is among the busiest travel plazas in the country. Bingham said that the Thanksgiving holiday period brings the heaviest traffic to Maryland House each year.
"The low gas prices gave them an excuse to go," Bingham said. "Now they have to get back home. Their spirits are good."
Although heavy rain slowed traffic along interstates in Maryland yesterday, state police reported few traffic-related accidents. Of the eight fender-benders reported along I-95 as of late afternoon, three generated accident reports. And none of the accidents resulted in injury, according to Sgt. Michael Tagliaferri, a spokesman for the Maryland State Police.
At BWI Marshall Airport, there was a 2.5 percent drop in travel this holiday week compared with last year, officials said. About 648,000 passengers flew out of the airport, including 79,000 yesterday, the airport's busiest day.
