Gas Prices on the rise – AGAIN!!!

P5192181 (2), originally uploaded by Robert Brown...

It’s that time of year again. Starting with the Memorial Day weekend and with summer around the corner, we have the cookouts, the swimming and the vacations. Some members of the older generations can remember the once popular road trips where families would pile into the family car and hit the highways for either a far away destination like Disneyland or maybe, if you lived in El Paso, just down the road a few hours away to some attraction like White Sands, the Space Museum in Alamogordo or maybe even Ruidoso, and if you were lucky enough, all three destinations or more.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, just about the same time, with the return of the swimsuits, the barbecue grills with hot dogs, hamburgers and steaks and children running out of their schools ready for summer vacation, so too returns the “higher gas prices”.

Like a swarm of locusts it attacks. It eats away at people’s hard earned money turning road trips that older generations remember with fondness into a simple 20 to 30 minute drive to the nearest park with a swimming pool and/or barbecue grill if not just a drive to the local supermarket for supplies for a backyard barbecue with maybe some backyard camping for the kids.

Memorial Day weekend is barely upon us and for approximately the last fifteen days gas prices have increased by approximately 27 cents. That comes out to roughly an increase of about 1.8 cents per day. So maybe we shouldn't’t be surprised if by the time the Memorial Day weekend arrives, gas prices have increased another 10 to 15 cents higher. But that’s not what worries me.

What worries me is that since 2005 gas prices for each subsequent year have increased higher than the previous year. When you consider that last year gas prices in El Paso almost topped off at $4.00 per gallon, or even more in some other parts of the country, at what point should we wait to start to complain about the gas prices? After they surpass $3.00 per gallon or should we wait until the gas prices are 50 cents higher than last year’s highest prices?

http://www.elpasogasprices.com/retail_price_chart.aspx