Use this US gas price heat map to design cheapest possible road trip

The ongoing global surplus of gas production caused prices at the pumps in America to drop to their lowest mark in five and a half years this week. Though the difference of a few pennies per gallon may not mean much for commuting to work, the savings on a long trips can be substantial.

This dip is not being reflected in airfares, however, much to the irritation of pretty much everyone. “At a time when the cost of fuel is plummeting and profits are rising, it is curious and confounding that ticket prices are sky-high and defying economic gravity,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said last month.

Until something changes, Americans are more likely to give serious thought to traveling by car on their next trip. Thus we present a gas price heat map for the U.S., compiled by GasBuddy.com, with which one can plot the cheapest road trip in recent memory.

Unsurprisingly, the best gas prices seem to be clustered in the Midwest. A nearly uninterrupted stretch of sub-$2 gas can currently be had all along the I-35 corridor from the northern tip of Minnesota down to the Mexican border in Texas, with hundreds of miles of wiggle room on each side and scattered dots of sub-$1.79 and sub-$1.65. Ranges and pockets of sub-$2 gas and lower occur all the way to the East Coast through Virginia and South Carolina, with a curious wonderland of inexpensive gas in Ohio.

Of course, if one ventures too far west or into the northeast, you risk flirting with near-$3 gas prices again.

Will these prices usher in a new era of road tripping, with carefree families racing around the green zones, filling their gas tanks with jars of loose change, or will we simply see an uptick in Hummer and stretch, six-wheel pick-up truck sales? Time will tell.