Many Minnesotans and Americans are hitting the roads and airports this weekend, which is expected to be the third-busiest Memorial Day weekend since 2000, according to AAA.

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Despite a small, last-minute increase due to the holiday demand, gas prices are much lower than last year.

“We’ve been pretty level the last three weeks as we’ve seen those low prices and low demand. Then, if you’ve started noticing those prices creeping back up a little bit, it’s because we are anticipating huge amounts of people to be motoring this weekend, whether that’s on a boat or driving to their destination, and we see that demand to go up,” Meredith Mitts, with AAA Minnesota, said.

Even with the slight increase recently, the national average of $3.55 per gallon is still down eight cents from last month and $1.02 lower than last year. The average cost per gallon in Minnesota currently is $3.50.

AAA projects 42.3 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles for their Memorial Day weekend plans, which would be an increase of around 7% or 2.7 million people compared to last year. Nearly 3.4 million of those people are expected to fly to their destinations, up 11% from 2022.