Travel will take on a red, white and blue hue this year as vacationers increasingly opt to stay close to home, and the surge in patriotism moves many to rediscover the great sites of American history.

Forecasting what travel will be like in 2002 is, to use a phrase I heard last fall, like trying to read a crystal ball while it’s rolling across the floor. The ball has been rolling since Sept. 11 and has yet to stop.

The terrorist attacks, coupled with an economic slump, may have weakened Americans’ desire to travel.

While wanderlust is reasserting itself across the country, it’s a more sedate strain than when we forecast travel a year ago.

The Travel Industry Association of America reported that travel by Americans will be down 8.4 percent this winter, with 10 million fewer trips compared with the same time in 2001. Those numbers are expected to continue into the spring and summer.

For those who do travel, there are bargains to be had. Air fares in December were at their lowest levels since the late 1980s as airlines scrambled to fill their jumbo jets.

Whether it’s a quick getaway or a distant journey, here are our picks of some of the top trends in 2002:

Local, local, local: Las Vegas, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Big Bear, the Colorado River resorts. All are likely to benefit from the most pronounced trend in travel this year  the desire by many Americans not to venture far from home. One out of five leisure travelers will cancel a trip or change it to a less-distant destination as a result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to a study by Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown, a leading travel marketing forecaster. The study found that most Americans prefer a vacation that is no more than three hours away by car or plane.

Road trips: Route 66 to New Mexico, Highway 1 to Big Sur and Highway 395 up the back side of the Sierra. All are just the kind of car trip Americans say they plan this year. Long delays at airports will motivate many travelers to drive to destinations such as Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Francisco, where recently they might have flown. The trend is aided by relatively low gas prices, though a move by oil-rich nations to limit production could lead to a price surge at the pump by summer.

History happened here: Lexington and Concord, Gettysburg and Antietam, Pearl Harbor. America’s new war has renewed interest in the sites of earlier struggles. From the leafy green of Revolutionary War battlefields in New England to the monument-filled Civil War fields sprinkled from Pennsylvania to Texas, history is hot. No one place resonates more today than Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, site of the 1941 Japanese sneak attack that pushed the United States into World War II.

National parks: Crater Lake’s 100th anniversary tops the lineup of events at the national natural treasures. Nowhere is the “see America first” sentiment more rewarding than visits to regional favorites like Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Zion, Bryce and Carlsbad Caverns. For many Americans, a visit to these cathedrals of nature is even more evocative of the American spirit than historical sites.

Cruise bargains: Discounts, discounts and more discounts. Fifteen new ships will be added to cruise line fleets in 2002, from American Cruise Lines’ 49-passenger American Glory plying the East Coast waters from Baltimore to Royal Caribbean International’s Brilliance of the Sea, a floating resort for 2,501 passengers. All the ships add to the glut of staterooms on the seas. The result will likely be deep discounting on cruises, especially in the hypercompetitive Caribbean. Many lines are bringing ships back from Europe to add trips to Canada, Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.