Wife Sharon and I have returned to Michigan after about 8,000 miles and nearly six weeks of summer road tripping. Between July 3 and August 16 we covered ground from Salt Lake City (west) to Warwick, Rhode Island (east).

You can safely bet that gasoline costs were an issue during our travels.

Highest price we paid for gasoline that met the minimum 87 Octane (“regular” gas) rating required for our vehicle was $3.279 a gallon in Craig, Colorado, on July 10. A couple days later we saw 88 Octane gas at Gillette, Wyoming for $2.799 – a dime cheaper than we’d paid to fill up a bit earlier at Wheatland, Wyoming.

Our least expensive gas of the whole 8,000 miles was purchased at … Ithaca, Michigan on August 16 -- $2.819. Up the road in Shepherd that same day, gas was a least a dime more dear.

As some recent Sound Off callers have suggested, I am beginning to consider doing my “special” shopping in communities like Alma, where gas is almost always significantly cheaper than in Mt. Pleasant. That makes sense for a Shepherd resident like myself, on those occasions when “grocery day” or general merchandise shopping and time for a fillup coincide.

Maybe if the Mt. Pleasant business community began to recognize that business is going elsewhere because of high gasoline prices in town, “market forces” would bring motor fuel costs down a tad.