More holiday travelers hit the road this Christmas to avoid travel delays

SACRAMENTO — Some vacationers hit the road late Friday to hit the gas to miss extra traffic.

Grandpa Bruce Ullon packed all the gifts into duct-taped containers in the back of his truck. His silver sleigh was ready to ride from Georgetown to the San Francisco Bay Area.

“It will take two hours and thirty minutes,” he said.

Ulon is one of 102 million Americans expected to visit their vacation destinations this year — 2 million more than a year ago.

At Sacramento International Airport (SMF), Maria Vasquez and her husband’s trip was first delayed, then canceled.

“Our flight was delayed, so they told us to come back a little later, and we did, and then we got here, and then they told us they couldn’t make our connecting flight from Sacramento to Las Vegas and from Las Vegas to Omaha,” she said.

According to FlightAware, 37 flights were canceled and 76 delayed departures from SMF on Friday, mostly due to severe weather across the country.

While travel by ground and air increased this year, it still hasn’t reached pre-2019 epidemic levels, AAA said.