Thanksgiving is upon us, which means more than 41 million Americans will be shoving off in planes, trains and automobiles to spend the holiday somewhere more than 50 miles from home. But even with gas prices hovering around two bucks a gallon, there will be fewer people on the road for the first time since 2002, the American Automobile Association says.

Air travel will be down 7.2 percent and 1.2 percent fewer people will make a road trip this year, according to the Triple A annual survey of holiday travel. On the other hand, some 180,000 people more people are expected to hop on a train or a bus. The modest decline in people heading out to the highway or leaving on a jet plane has less to do with gridlocked traffic and hellish airports than the economic downturn.

"The overall state of the economy continues to present real challenges for some Americans looking to travel this Thanksgiving," Robert L. Darbelnet, AAA president and CEO, said. "However, the desire to spend time with family, combined with significantly lower gasoline prices than earlier this year, will provide a strong impetus for many Americans to travel."

This is the first Thanksgiving holiday season since 2002 to see a decline in holiday travel and the fourth consecutive travel holiday of the year to see a year-to-year decline in the number of people hitting the road or taking to the skies. But what's amazing is despite the guaranteed hassles of a Thanksgiving getaway,millions of people throw common sense to the wind and make the same arduous trek every year.

And we do it despite our common sense, knowing that the roads can be dangerous and our license plates may be photographed, located on a GPS

map and logged into a database, at least in Arizona.

Is it the awesome horsepower of a mother’s guilt, an unconscious inability to spend two consecutive weekdays days off at home or just the purely compulsive nature of traditional culture? Whatever it is that jams up nearly every out-bound lane on every metropolitan freeway in America on the Wednesday afternoon before Turkey Day probably isn’t going away.

So we’d be grateful to know how those of you making a trip this weekend will avoid the traffic comes along with Thanksgiving? General tips are appreciated. But you can post actual route numbers, freeways and airport names if you got them.

Photo by Flickr user Mayr.