Food and Gas Prices

Later this week there may be a few more comments about and perhaps some pictures from the weekend trip up the coast - a few remarks are provided today. Aside from not seeing the sun the whole time, it was pretty nice and Hearst Castle really is something. Even without the sun, the California coast is spectacular - lots of elephant seals and other wildlife in addition to tourists (like us) all converging on the same general areas.

Naturally, gas prices were high, and this opportunity is being taken to slip in another update of the California SUV Fill Up Index, but what was also apparent during this trip was the increasing cost of dining out.

With dinners, there is such a wide variety to pick from that it's really hard to get a good feel for changing prices unless you just monitor one restaurant over time. But with breakfasts, they all serve pretty much the same thing, and prices are all in the same area.

So, it used to be that in this part of the country you'd have to pay $7 or $8 for a normal breakfast entree (e.g., an omelet with some sort of meat in it) at one of the chain breakfast places or at a "Mom and Pop" place that provided about the same food and service.

In recent months, and particularly on this trip, it seems clear that the $7 breakfast is now long gone (unless you just want waffles) and the $8 breakfast will soon join it. More and more, it's $9 or double digits for the bulk of the items that appear on the breakfast menu.

Multiply by two, add a couple cups of coffee and a tip, and you're looking at between $25 and $30 for a breakfast that used to be in the low twenties (a quick check of our receipts for breakfast on Saturday shows $28.56 and for this morning it was $27.64).

Maybe it's time to cut back a bit.

Crazy Gas Prices, Crazy Drivers

Are the drivers of big SUVs getting more aggressive on the road as gas prices rise? It sure seems that way - this could explain part of it.

On the way back we actually saw one gas station that was selling regular gas for $3.09 a gallon - every other place was $3.20 or more, many of them at $3.35 or $3.40.
With this update, the Hummer H2 now moves over the $100 mark and the Infiniti FX45 past the $75 level. Note that these fill up amounts are all based on regular grade gas, and, as at least one reader has commented, the H1 uses diesel.

Oh well, close enough.

There seems to be an increasing debate over paying for premium gas these days, and to be honest, there's little to gain from weighing in here. This is an example discussion about the Infiniti FX45, which with an extra twenty cents or so per gallon for premium would be about $5 or so higher for a fill up.

It would be much too much work to take all these things into consideration with our modest table - maybe if some news media takes an interest, we'll take a little more interest too.

And, speaking of Hummers and gasoline costs, here's a cartoon from the USA Today weekend edition.

Click to enlarge