Gas prices may be skyrocketing, but Americans still love their RVs despite the fact that they often get 10 mpg — or less.

RV popularity boomed during the pandemic as travelers looked for safe ways to travel while maintaining social distance. Americans continue to turn to RVs even as they've grown increasingly comfortable flying and staying in hotels.

RV production in North America hit an all-time high in 2021, with more than 600,000 vehicles produced, according to RV Industry Association spokeswoman Monika Geraci. The association expects 2022 will be its second-best year of production ever. RVs are especially popular in the South and West.

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Thor Industries, which owns popular RV brands Airstream and Jayco, said this month that its sales were up 34.6% in the latest three months, compared with the same period last year. Thor Industries says it still has a backlog of RV orders worth $13.88 billion.

RV experts say consumers are adjusting to high gas prices by taking shorter trips.

"If you live in Phoenix and were thinking of Yosemite in California, you might do the Grand Canyon instead," said Randall Smalley, who leads marketing and business development at Cruise America, which rents RVs.

Dane Lee and his wife Jenna sold their Dallas home in 2020 and bought an RV as their jobs became remote during the pandemic.

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They've crossed the country twice in their RV, but will be staying closer to family in Birmingham, Alabama this year. Lee said their 150-gallon diesel tank can cost close to $900 to fill from empty. But they don't plan to go back to a traditional house.

"We had the house in the suburbs with a pool and a fence and that stuff. It got a little monotonous going to the office and going back home," Lee said. "The flexibility of having a new view every week is awesome. We've found where we want to be."

Jon Gray, CEO of RV Share, an online marketplace for renting RVs, told CNN Business that customers' average trip in May was slightly less than 350 miles, 9% shorter than in May of last year.

RV Share will be giving away $500,000 in gift cards to customers this year to compensate for increased gas prices on trips. Even with the high gas prices, last week RV Share had its biggest day of bookings this year, Gray said.

Jennifer Young, co-founder of the RV marketplace Outdoorsy, said that "near-cations" are a big trend, as many people stay within 100 miles of home. Young said the average nightly cost of an Outdoorsy rental has increased $5 from last year. Outdoorsy's rentals for the 4th of July are up 4% from last year, Young said.

The increased fuel costs of RVs may be more acceptable to travelers due to inflation across the economy, including more expensive airfare. RV costs may not look as daunting when compared to alternatives. RV travelers often bring their own food and cook, helping to manage costs. Many RV travelers drive exclusively on the first and last day of the trip and leave the RV parked the rest of the trip.

"RVs are not gas-powered vacations," Young said. "They look like they are because they have a steering wheel and four wheels."

RV experts say a growing industry trend is having an RV delivered to an RV site for a vacationing family to use.

Gray, the RV Share CEO, said 20% of his rentals involve the RV's owner driving the vehicle to a campground or destination and leaving it there for the renters. That way travelers can drive their own fuel-efficient vehicle to the RV's location. Then they can enjoy the benefits of vacationing in an RV — which can feel like having a hotel room whose door opens to some of the country's most beautiful places, like national parks — without ever having to fuel up the vehicle to drive it long distances. RV Share started offering the service early in the pandemic.

Canceled flights, long lines, and overall chaos. Airlines are trying to keep up as travel demand goes through the roof following pandemic-related restrictions.

“When the pandemic hit, for most airlines around the country, our traffic volumes dropped by 85, 90, sometimes more than 90 percent,” Captain Marc Champion, the managing director of flight training at United Airlines, said. “With the traffic recovery, we’ve had to recover a lot of people that we had been placed on the sideline, in some cases some carriers had furloughed, to get airline operations back to where they were pre-pandemic.”

Fewer pilots to staff the flights.

Consulting firm Oliver Wyman estimates that in most scenarios, there will be a global gap of 34,000 pilots by 2025.

“We can't hire enough pilots to keep up with how many airplanes we have to fly,” Captain M’Lis Ward with United Airlines said. She is also an evaluator at the training center and has been flying for more than 30 years.

It’s not a new problem. Airlines were looking to fill the pilot pipeline before the pandemic.

At United Airlines’ expanding training center, pilots get first-hand experience in simulators. United plans to train around 5,000 pilots by 2030 through their United Aviate Academy, their pilot training school. Captain Champion said United is pretty well staffed currently.

This summer, there have been waves of canceled flights due to weather and staff shortages. American Airlines cut three destinations from its network in June. The same month, Delta Airlines cut flights to seven cities.

But there are even more efforts to tap into groups who may not see it as a career option.

“The push right now for women and people of color and minorities also…is not just because this is the right thing to do,” Captain Ward said. “It’s because there are a lot of talented pilots out there that don't have the opportunity.”

She says finances are part of it.

Captain Ward was reportedly the first black woman captain in commercial aviation.

“I'm not going to say that I felt incredibly welcomed as a woman of color…when I first got hired,” she said. “Thirty years ago to today, it's completely opposite.”

Seven percent of all airline pilots are women. Only one percent are women of color, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nonprofits advocating for more minority representation in aviation are becoming more common.

“If you don't see it, it's hard to visualize yourself doing it. For women, for me, I would say that's the biggest barrier even now,” Angel Hughes, the founder of nonprofit Sisters of the Skies, said.

The nonprofit provides mentorship and scholarships to women of color interested in flying.

“These companies, various companies, everybody wants pilots,” Hughes said.

“If you look at the demand for airline employees over the course of the next decade, if we don't cast a wider net and get underrepresented groups more excited about careers in aviation, we’re never going to be able to find the numbers of people that we need to staff our airline. Both at the airports and on board our aircraft. So that's a business imperative for us,” Captain Champion said.

For airlines, getting people interested is just step one. Captain Ward and Hughes strive to offer opportunities to those who may or may not know the opportunity is there.

“What’s the end result? We have more great pilots. It's not taking away an opportunity from anyone. It’s adding opportunity for everyone,” Captain Ward said. The United Aviate Academy – a pilot career development program – hopes to have at least half of the pilots trained at the academy be women or people of color.

“The pilot pipeline starts at the point where we are incentivizing and motivating people to be pilots, professional pilots. It's something that starts in high schools, junior high schools,” Captain Champion said.

2021 is a year of comebacks. Few businesses saw bigger extremes between last year and this year than the ones that deal in summer and vacations.

What makes for a perfect summer vacation? Is it the saltwater breezes? Stretching out under palm trees and summer sun? Whatever it is, the closest most of us came to it in 2020 was in our old vacation pictures.

The pandemic brought a tough year for those who love to travel and an even tougher year for those whose whole livelihood is based around vacations.

Terilynn McQuiston is a one-woman show, a swimsuit creator propelled to do this from fandom of a certain brash feminist anthem-singing pop icon frontwoman and recent newlywed.

“I’m inspired by Gwen Stefani and No Doubt, everything SoCal,” McQuiston smiled. “She’s bold. She’s unapologetic. She’s a mom too. I’m just a girl in Nashville, so I decided to make something everyone looks good in.”

Handling it all with a sewing machine in her room, living the simple kind of life, McQuiston’s brand is even named after a track on No Doubt’s fifth album.

“Hella TL!” McQuiston said, naming her brand. “It’s a play on No Doubt’s song Hella Good. I can’t see myself not doing this. I guess you could say it’s a dream.”

When people started canceling their 2020 plans for a sweet escape, there came a hard year for this swimsuit designer.

“2020 was pretty scary,” she said. “Nobody was traveling.”

In fact, according to market research company The NPD Group, the travel accessories market nationally took a $1.8 billion loss in 2020.

“I had been working as a pattern maker for a major corporation,” said McQuiston. “They had a mass layoff, and I was one of the casualties.”

So, like a certain famous frontwoman, McQuiston went solo, focusing all her time on her own brand.

“I kept thinking in the back of my head, it’s gonna get better,” she said.

And it did.

2021 is seeing a surge in people packing up their vacation ware, with the NPD Group reporting luggage sales back to 80% of their 2019 levels. As vaccinations got underway, spending on airlines, hotels, and online travel agencies leaped up 90% between just February and March of this year. The best news belongs to McQuiston. Swimsuit sales are up 185% nationally compared to last year. They’re even up 32% over 2019.

“I have more than tripled my sales from 2020,” she said. “People are starting to get out. They’ve been vaccinated. There is nothing like having that feeling of, ‘I can do this. I can make this work.’”

McQuiston said 2020 brought lessons. Don’t speak negativity. There will be a way to reinvent and return. No doubt.

GALVESTON, Tx. — People are hungry to see their towns come back to life with summer travelers, and now that cruises are starting to sail again over the holiday weekend, it seems travel is fully back on.

If you visit Galveston, Texas, it’s easy to see: summer vacation is in full swing, even before the cruises take off.

“Right now, it’s just packed. It's wall-to-wall people,” said the Port of Galveston CEO Rodger Rees.

Travelers are enjoying and family businesses are thriving.

“I don't even know how this place can get any busier, but I think it's going to be great,” said Gracie Bassett, who runs Gracie’s gift shop with her family.

“My parents have had Gracie’s for 24 years, and they've been in retail for 29 years,” said Bassett. “I've just grown up in the store.”

They worried COVID-19 would cut this family legacy short, but this stop for trinkets and treasures never went quiet.

“Because Galveston is so close to Houston, it's one of the fourth largest cities in the country. People were able to drive, and they just wanted to get away from the craziness of COVID, so they'd come to the beach,” said Bassett.

Her family has been so busy, they were able to expand and open a second shop right down the street. But, the success here is a stark contrast to the emptiness just blocks away.

“From the cruise business standpoint, we really we really have been injured,” said Rees. “We've, we lost about $44 million in revenues over the last 16 months.”

Galveston’s biggest attraction has been docked for more than a year. The businesses supporting the cruise industry almost sunk, too.

“We were always sitting idle and that was really hard on us,” said Jason Hayes, who owns several cruise parking lots in Galveston.

The business he’s built with his mom since 2003 barely survived. He said he’s always saved money for a rainy day and was thankful he could lean on that over the last year.

“We didn't turn off our Comcast. We didn't stop our insurance on our buses,” said Hayes. “We kept paying our bills. If we have known that we're going to be out of business for 16 months, you know, I probably would have sold my buses.”

But this man, much like this town, lives and breathes cruising. He even got married on a ship.

“That's what we do. That's who we are. We're cruise ship parking family,” said Hayes.

That love kept his hope alive that the ships would return.

“We can feel it. It's in the air. People are gearing up. People are calling. People are excited,” said Hayes.

Cruises are set to take off all throughout July, with more ships docking in Galveston in the months ahead.

But, this time off from cruising showed travelers across the nation: there’s more here than just a port.

“What proves that is when you go out and see the cars and you see Oklahoma, you see Michigan, you see Kansas, you see Iowa,” said Rees, of the tourists here from different states coming just to enjoy the beach.

“Galveston is so rich in history and it's a little bit like, you know, a small New Orleans, it's got a lot of character. So, you know, there's a lot of upside potential here,” said Rees.

Because even when the cruises come back, these families still want travelers to come and stay in the place they call home.

Summer 2021 will undoubtedly look much different than the summer of lockdown in 2020. With mask mandates slowly lifting and vaccination rates on the rise, AAA expects roads in Ohio to be much busier this weekend.

A survey released by AAA Monday morning says over 1.4 million Ohioans plan to travel for Memorial Day weekend, which is about 86% of the people who traveled pre-pandemic.

The poll shows Ohioans have pent-up restlessness after the pandemic forced everyone to sit out for a year. AAA calls it "revenge travel.”

The poll shows 61% of Ohioans who responded plan on taking a trip, and 33% are thinking of taking just a quick get-away. But 18% of respondents are planning on a longer, more extravagant trip.

While people have all this energy for travel, gas prices could be the one roadblock.

According to Gas Buddy, gas prices this Memorial Day weekend will be the highest they've been since 2014, about $2.98 per gallon. That’s up about a dollar from last year's rate.

Most of that increase is due to the Colonial Pipeline Shutdown. The good news is that it should ease up soon, but Gas Buddy predicts demand may drive prices back up this summer.