Jeanne Wehnau, left, and her husband, Peter, right, from Titusville, Fla., walk their Siberian huskies, Trishka, left, and Nikolai, right, after arriving Tuesday at the Lawrence KOA campgrounds, 1473 U.S. Highway 40, to meet up with friends Bill and Elaine Trendler, of Forest Grove, Pa., in the background. As part of their first summer trip the two couples will travel on to Maple Hill for a motor-coach gathering and reunion for Memorial Day weekend.

The economy being what it is these days, perhaps the flight to Morocco is out. Or the weeklong sojourn in the nation’s capital. Or even a weekend in Las Vegas.

But camping near Lawrence Municipal Airport? Booked solid.

“I’ve been turning people away for a week now,” said Harold Hays, manager of the Lawrence KOA Kampground, south of U.S. Highway 24-40 at the edge of North Lawrence. “The whole world’s in a credit crunch. Europe and Australia are coming off their absolute best, record-breaking seasons of camping. Everybody’s going back to basics.

“It’s all, ‘What can I do that’s affordable and still have fun?’ We’re Americans. We’ll always find ways to do that,” Hays said.

This Memorial Day weekend, an estimated 32.4 million Americans will be traveling by road, rails, water or air, AAA says. That would be an increase of 1.5 percent from a year ago.

Helping drive the demand: lower fuel prices.

A year ago, Memorial Day travelers were paying an average of $3.84 per gallon in Kansas, said Jim Hanni, executive vice president for AAA’s Kansas Region. That was the highest average ever recorded for the holiday weekend.

This year, fuel is more than $1.50 per gallon cheaper, allowing travelers to get back into the game — even if the economy isn’t exactly speeding toward recovery.

“You can’t keep people cooped up forever,” Hanni said, noting that fuel prices had been creeping back up in recent weeks. “Maybe we can’t go quite as far as we would have liked to have gone, but we’re going.”

At Lawrence KOA, Hays said his business already was up 15 percent from a year ago. And the customers are changing, too.

No longer are his visitors all retirees making annual trips from points far away. Now his campers are increasingly likely to be young families from the Kansas City area or even Lawrence, looking to travel a short distance but still get away from the everyday.