DREAM SCENE

PALMER — Mike Pepin and Pat Goodwin usually would haul their camper trailers a bit farther than Palmer on Friday afternoon, but soaring gasoline prices have forced the Anchorage residents to scale back the distance of their blacktop adventures.

Like many hitting the road this holiday weekend, the price of regular unleaded fuel topping $4 a gallon and the often vast distance between Alaska travel destinations has put the squeeze on their road trip plans. With Memorial Day weekend being the unofficial start of the summer travel season, analysts don’t see a rise in fuel prices leveling off anytime soon, and some experts are predicting fuel as high as $5 a gallon or more by the middle of summer.

Information like that poses tough choices for recreational enthusiasts itching to get out of town while the weather is warm.

Pepin and Goodwin, along with their families, were setting up camp at Homestead RV park just off the Glenn Highway on a windy afternoon Friday. With bulky trailers, ATVs and trucks large enough to haul it all, the men said they’d decided not to head as far north as in recent years.

“The main reason I ain’t going to pull very far out of town is because of $4 gas,” Pepin said.

Past road trips have seen the friends, who are both in the U.S. Air Force, head as far as Denali or Fairbanks to escape the hustle and bustle of Anchorage. This year, Pepin said getting about 50 miles out of Anchorage will have to do.

“We already talked about just being happy camping on base,” Pepin said.

Across the Glenn Highway at Fox Run RV, Terry and Anne Burge, also Anchorage residents, said they entertained the notion of taking a weekend trip to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. But getting at best eight to 10 miles a gallon out of their massive RV shot down that idea as fuel prices steadily rose in recent weeks. It cost the Burges $260 to fill their rig.

So instead of Whitehorse, the couple said they’d be content kicking their feet up in Palmer for the night, saving themselves what Terry Burge estimates to be $300 for every 300 miles.

Changing clientele

In the main office of Homestead RV park, owner Kathy Utecht said what seems like disastrous prices to Americans appears to be nothing to foreigners.

Utecht said she’s noticed a jump in Japanese and other Asian tourists arriving in their freshly rented RVs from Ted Stevens International Airport.

“Foreign visitors are higher,” Utecht said.

She’s not alone in her observations. Many bed and breakfast owners in the Valley have reported a larger than usual number of Europeans and Asians taking advantage of the weak United States dollar to grab a bargain Alaska vacation. The paradox could serve to keep tourist numbers flush in the state even as some in the travel industry worry belt-tightening by American families will put a crimp on the summer season.

To begin her own summer season, Utecht was in for a shock when a lengthy drive in her RV from Arizona, where she spends the winter, rang up a $2,000 gas bill.

Exchange rates in Canada often puts fuel at nearly $6 a gallon in that country, she said.

Those numbers go along with a dwindling interest in driving the world famous Alaska Highway. Utecht said the number of rental RVs coming to her park have spiked in recent years, getting away from families renting rigs in the Lower 48 to make the long drive.

“I think we have a bit more short trips,” Utecht said.

Boon for rental shops

Thomas Hannam said Friday that high gas prices aren’t hurting his rental business. In fact, his business is booming.

“I’m thinking it’s positive for me,” said Hannam, who owns Alaska Toy Rental. “I feel sorry for those businesses like the Honda shop and Wasilla Arctic Cat. It’s easier to go rent.”

Hannam said would-be four-wheelers seem gun shy about purchasing ATVs because of the cost of upkeep. Couple that with spending money on increasingly expensive gas used to power off-road vehicles and customers appear to be experiencing buyer’s hesitation.

The same thinking goes toward motor homes, Hannam said.

“I don’t think these people want to drive up from the Lower 48, and [instead] utilize that $1,500 or $2,000 gas bill toward renting a motor home,” Hannam said.

Reports from bed and breakfast owners back up what rental companies are seeing: tourists forgoing the long drive from Outside and spending that gas money on a plane ticket and short-use rentals.

“Here they can just drop it back off and be done with it,” Hannam said.

Can Alaska’s mystique save tourist season?

Even as gas prices soar higher and Saudis refuse a plea for help from President George W. Bush, who traveled to Riydah, Saudi Arabia, last week to ask for more oil output, Alaska is still the same state people plan much of their lives to visit. That’s what those who live off the tourist industry, like Homestead’s Utecht, will rely on to see their businesses full this summer.

“I think a lot of what we hear is, ‘This is our trip we planned for a lifetime, we’re doing it now,’” Utecht said.

For proof, look no further than slot No. 9 at the Homestead park. That’s where Maryland resident Larry Motter has his camper set up.

The 72-year old went $400 over his budget traversing Canada on the Alaska Highway. He doesn’t plan on staying sedentary at the RV park either and hopes to make trips out to scenic vistas and other places only Alaska can offer. How far he’ll go, Motter admits, might be factored by what gas will cost.

But the price of gas won’t be a deciding factor for his one-in-a-lifetime trip, he said. Being in Alaska can make someone forget all about what they’re paying to drive around the state.

“Alaska is worth it,” he said. “This might be our last chance.”

Contact Michael Rovito at Michael.rovito@frontiers-man.com or 352-2252.