CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Its the heart of winter Texan season and some RV owners are starting to take notice, they don’t have neighbors this year.
"This whole park is usually filled and you see, look around me, you'll see there's quite a few empty," Steve Goben said.
The Winter Texan has been coming to south Texas for the last four years, but he’s said his Rockport RV park is looking a lot less full this year.
“They’re not coming,” he said.
Goben is a St. Joseph, Missouri native. Like many others he’s here to escape the cold. He said it was 34 degrees back home on Thursday, but that many of his friends and people he knows are not making the trip this year.
“Oh, they’re frozen," he said. "There’s a lot of people that just hate it. People who’ve been coming down here for 20, 30 years and now they can’t come because they can’t afford the (gas and diesel) prices."
While Goben's RV runs on diesel, not all do. His neighbor in the RV park said his runs on gasoline.
The average gas price in Texas on Thursday was $2.98 a gallon. The average of diesel in Texas was $4.10, according to AAA.
“When we started coming down, diesel fuel, we drive a diesel, it was $1.87 a gallon," Goben said. "Now it’s $3.90. We used to stop and fill at a half tank for $100, now it’s over $300.”
According to Goben, prices are worse in Missouri. The average of diesel in Missouri on Thursday was $4.09, according to AAA.
Goben has been talking to his neighbors about this, who are from all over the country.
“Well I’ve talked to people here in the park that usually go to Florida and they said they didn’t go this year because the fuel prices,” Goben said.
So while there maybe be vacancies in Rockport, there are still new Winter Texans coming here.
“Its the first year we brought an RV….We love it down here,” Lori Omera, a participant at the 5th annual Winter Texan Appreciation Day said.
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