Holiday Travel
AAA Oregon is reporting that an estimated 785,000 Oregonians will be taking to the roads, air and even sea this thanksgiving. Beginning today roadways are expected to be heavy with traffic. They estimate an average of 55.4 million people will travel more than 50 miles from home to see family or some of the many sites around the country. It will be the third busiest Thanksgiving since AAA started tracking holiday travel in 2000. 2005 and 2019 preceded it. Air travel has increased 6.6% and train, bus and cruise ships are up 11% over last year.
Gas Prices
While traveling for Thanksgiving you can expect to see lower gas prices. Marie Dodds with AAA Oregon says gas prices have gone down again in Oregon another nine cents bringing the average for a price of regular gas in Oregon to $4.11. here in Florence the average price has stayed fairly steady at $3.64 a gallon. Most stations locally are staying with 2-3 cents of each other with one station posting $3.69. Dodds says prices should continue to decline over the holiday season barring any international events in critical crude producing nations.
Holiday Waste Reduction
As the holiday season kicks off, Waste Wise Lane County—a part of the Lane County Waste Management Division—again encourages county residents to do the holidays differently this year with the launch of its second “Simplify the Holidays” campaign. Last year marked the first iteration of the campaign, which is produced by the Center for Biological Diversity and has again been adopted by Waste Wise Lane County. “Simplify the Holidays” encourages residents and businesses to reimagine how they view and participate in the holiday season to inspire joy while curbing waste. The campaign includes earth-friendly gift ideas and will run through December 31. However, this year’s campaign includes a twist: a holiday leftovers recipe contest. Waste Wise Lane County Outreach Coordinator Daniel Hiestand says they want to collect your recipes and share them with our community to inspire folks to reduce food waste and save money. Recipes submitted during the campaign will be published on the Waste Wise Lane County food waste prevention website, eatsmartwasteless.tips. Those who share recipes will be automatically entered into a prize drawing, with contest winners announced on January 3.
WLEOG Survey
Western Lane Emergency Operations Group would like area residents to participate in an emergency preparedness survey the anonymous survey will look at emergency readiness so that WLEOG can develop ways to improve resources, training and preparedness for the region. The survey takes about 10 minutes and a link to the survey can be found at the city’s website ci.florence.or.us. information can also be found at florencechamber.com.