High Gas Prices Aren’t Slowing Holiday Travelers

The high price of gasoline isn’t expected to curb this year’s frenzied Memorial Day weekend getaway, but it is sending one angry gas station owner to “jail.”

O Keith Fullington says the $1.60-plus price per gallon is nothing less than highway robbery and has erected a makeshift cell at his Rowland Heights business in protest.

The holiday weekend, which marks the beginning of summer for most Americans and is marked, among other things, by clogged highways in Orange County, seemed like the perfect time to highlight the hole gasoline prices are leaving in people’s pockets, he added.

“We need to bring some sanity back to oil prices,” Fullington said, just moments before donning his black and white striped jail fatigues and entering “solitary confinement” Thursday.

While drivers join Fullington in grumbling over California’s pump prices, up 27 cents a gallon from a year ago, surprisingly few, if any, appear to be giving up holiday travel plans, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California.

A record-breaking 2.3 million people are expected to hit the roads, the organization said.

“According to a survey of our travel agents, the fifth most popular destination for Californians this weekend is Anaheim,” said Marie Montgomery, a spokeswoman for the Auto Club of Southern California based in Costa Mesa.

The first four, she said, are Las Vegas, San Diego, Palm Springs and Santa Barbara. But lots of people, she said, “will be going to Disneyland.”

In Orange County, that’s likely to translate into congested conditions beginning this afternoon, , particularly on the eastbound Riverside Freeway, both directions of the Santa Ana Freeway and the Orange Freeway heading toward Las Vegas. The traffic is likely to subside, Montgomery said, late Saturday, then pick up again on Monday afternoon.

“My advice, if you want to get somewhere and don’t want to encounter traffic, is to try and travel in the off hours,” she said. “If you are stuck having to drive during the most congested times, just accept that you are going to get to your destination in many more hours than it usually takes. Relax, be calm, have plenty of fluids and, if you find yourself getting really frustrated, pull off the road and have a meal or something.”

For those able to tune out the frustrations of crowded, slow-moving freeways, the weather, at least, will be on their side.

Warm temperatures and sunny skies with little if any wind are expected this afternoon through Sunday from the Pacific Coast to Palm Springs, said Curt Kaplan, a National Weather Service specialist.

Temperatures will be cooler in coastal areas, where highs will range from upper 60s to mid-70s, and some morning fog is possible, Kaplan said. The San Fernando Valley will be warmer, with highs in the upper 80s and possibly 90s over the weekend. Looking for someplace even hotter? Then head out to Palm Springs, where it’s expected to reach 108 degrees in the low desert on Saturday.

Recreational vehicles were expected to fill Angeles National Forest campsites, U.S. Forest Service officials said.

“On a major holiday weekend like this one--when people make a concerted effort to get up here--it fills quickly,” said Diana Arthur, a Forest Service spokeswoman.

Even so, Arthur encouraged day-trippers to take advantage of numerous recreation areas including the Charlton Flat picnic area, Chilao fire lookout towers and the Mount Wilson observatory.

Forest officials expect traffic snarls on roads leading to campsites, but said those sites would remain open unless an accident or inclement weather prompts a shutdown by the California Highway Patrol.

Caltrans officials said motorists should be prepared for traffic delays in both directions of the Golden State Freeway for seven miles between California 138 and the Kern County line today and Monday afternoon. The freeway will be reduced to two lanes in both directions for bridge repair work.

Los Angeles area airports, too, are bracing for massive crowds this weekend. Officials are advising passengers to arrive at terminals at least an hour before their departures, carry photo identification and travel light.

At Los Angeles International Airport, about 200,000 travelers were expected daily through Monday, up from the 165,000 passengers on an average day, officials said.

Burbank airport officials were expecting as many as 4,000 more passengers than the 14,000 travelers moving through the terminal on an average day.

Van Nuys Airport officials said the 2,000-space parking lot for its FlyAway bus shuttle service to LAX was filled Thursday afternoon. However, drop-offs were still welcomed.

At Orange County’s John Wayne Airport, however, the picture was different: Airport officials say they are expecting less traffic over the holiday weekend than normal--about 81,000 passengers compared to the usual 90,000 on weekends.

“It’s because most of our passengers are business travelers who won’t be flying on the holiday,” airport spokeswoman Nghia Nguyen said.

Even so, she added, by Thursday afternoon traffic at the airport was “pretty steady. During a typical day you see rush hours, so to speak, with heavy travel in the morning and after work. During holiday times, it’s a steady flow all day.”

At least some passengers seemed to appreciate the airport’s relative calmness on Thursday as they prepared to embark on soon-to-be hectic weekends.

“LAX is pretty busy, but not John Wayne,” said Michael Brewer, a Newport Beach resident traveling to Chicago for the weekend with his wife and two children. “This is a lot more comfortable--we even got here an hour early.”

Katy Smith, an 18-year-old student from Atlanta, arriving for a weekend with relatives in San Juan Capistrano, agreed. “It seems pretty empty here compared to Atlanta,” she said.

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Times staff writers Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Karima A. Haynes and Aaron Sanderford contributed to this story.