Tourism businesses along Alaska highway report slow summer: double-digit decline in border crossing statistics.

• Author: Liles, Patricia
• Position: TOURISM

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Campgrounds with plenty of parking spots, light traffic on the highway, fewer dollars being spent on souvenirs--all are indications of a slow summer tourist season this year for businesses catering to travelers of the Alaska Highway.

"We figure it's 20 percent less," said Rose Jernigan, whose family owns and operates the Tok RV Village campground in the eastern Interior Alaska town. "Usually around the 4th of July, the tourist season peaks, with people coming in and some going out. This year, there were more people going out than coming in."

Other businesses located along the Alaska Highway, which officially begins in Dawson Creek, in eastern British Columbia, and ends nearly 1,400 miles northwest in Delta Junction, reported a similar reduction in business.

"The first two years, we were booked winter and summer," said Wayne Sorell, who, with his wife Cheryl and another business partner, own a recently constructed hotel in Fort Nelson, B.C., slightly less than 300 miles up the Alaska Highway. "But it's quite a bit less now."

While some of that decline in the hotel business is due to a recent slowdown in the region's oil and gas exploration industry, part of it is due to fewer tourists on the Alaska Highway. Wayne and Cheryl Sorell also own and operate WC Enterprises, a Laundromat in Fort Nelson, which caters to the local market as well as long-haul travelers on the Alaska Highway.

"There's been less traffic with the price of gas so crazy," he said. "These guys driving those big rig campers get six to eight miles to the gallon, so it cost them $600 to $800 to fill up."

Soaring fuel prices are playing a big part of the reduced enthusiasm for driving the Alaska Highway this summer, according to Leamon "Red" Slaven, a Florida resident camped in mid-July at Tubby's RV Park in Dawson Creek.

Slaven, who drives a 38-foot Holiday Rambler diesel-fueled recreational vehicle, is serving as the "tailman" or the service technician for a group of campers taking a 50-day tour through Canada and Alaska. He arrived ahead of the group at the starting point for the caravan in Dawson Creek, to make sure all logistical arrangements were set, a task he's handled before on other RV caravans.

"This year, we have 27 rigs going--usually on a trip like this, we take 40 rigs," Slaven said.

Several would-be travelers dropped out in January when fuel began to climb, he added.

Slaven's group planned this summer to drive up the Alaska Highway...