California residents are apt to be home for the holiday

Despite the declining costs, fewer Southern Californians will be hitting the roads this Labor Day weekend, opting instead to lounge in their inflatable backyard pools or flip burgers on the grill.

This weekend, holiday travel - which includes driving and flying - is expected to be 1.4percent lower than last year, when the number of Labor Day vacationers rose 1 percent, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California.

That's partly because even though gas prices have dropped for more than six consecutive weeks - to $3.92 a gallon for regular unleaded in the Los Angeles area - that's still $1.15 a gallon higher than a year ago. "It's been a tough year for gas prices. They're coming down fast. It's great," said Marie Montgomery, spokeswoman for the Auto Club. "But you still see those $4 prices out there."

And those prices, coupled with a sluggish economy and California's 7.3 percent unemployment rate - a 12-year high - have caused many families to think twice about packing up the car and cruising up the coast.

Southern California -- this just in

hough much of the space dust in the cloud is 1,000 years old, a newer stream, generated by the comet in the 1860s, accounts for most of the meteors we now see. The annual event, named for the point in space where it seems to originate -- the constellation Perseus -- is one of the year's most spectacular. Find a flat spot in a really dark place and, weather and moonlight willing, you can see up to 60 meteors per hour at the shower's peak.

So how do you find a dark spot in this flood-lighted city? So glad you asked. Hugo Martin has put together a little list of great SoCal viewing spots in our travel blog. (And yes, that's an actual photo shot during the Perseids in Joshua Tree in 2005.)