Gobble Gobble Travel – It's Thanksgiving Week

Thanksgiving week is here my friends, and there are travel tips to consider, as well as multiple ways to volunteer/give back.

Here comes the travel chaos! According to a report from AAA, this Thanksgiving (US), airports, train stations and roads will be the most crowded they’ve been since 2005 — with some 54 million Americans expected to travel more 50 miles. This is almost a 5 percent increase from last year, which comes out to about 2.5 million more people hitting the road. Cars are the most popular method of travel for Thanksgiving, with 48.5 million people driving, a 5 percent increase from last year. That’s followed by 4.27 million people taking planes (the largest growth, up 5.4 percent), then trains, buses and cruise ships, which account for 1.48 million travelers, up by 1.4 percent.

TRAVEL

To minimize potential headaches, AAA created a list of the worst days and times to leave 10 primary metropolitan areas in the country — as well as which highways to avoid and how long you may be delayed, so you know how much extra time to give yourself. For example, leaving Houston on Monday, Nov. 19, between 2 and 4 p.m. and taking the I69 could take you almost three times longer than usual. T+L recommends traveling on Thanksgiving day if you can swing it, when only 1.73 million passengers will fly (the lowest of the week) or signing up for TSA pre-check so you can skip security lines (obvi)

GIVE BACK

I was looking around at options to volunteer this holiday, and there is plenty to choose from! I often google an area, time of year and volunteer terminology to get a wide range of ideas, but VolunteerMatch is always a handy website too. I know for Thanksgiving, common options include:

Let’s recap with  Thanksgiving 5 Travel Tips that are still relevant for your airline travel this upcoming holiday week (also made with my old camera so please excuse the less-than-ideal audio)

USA, TravelCarrie Mitchelltravel, transporation, usa