The roads and the gas stations are packed. Airports are busy, too.

Cliff Porch is among the 31 million or so people nationwide on the highways this Thanksgiving weekend. He picked the busiest day of the year to drive from his home in Georgia to his family's home in Louisiana, but not by choice.

"I had to wait on my son; he got out of school yesterday," said Porch. "He's at Georgia Southern, so we needed to leave today."

Dozens of people crowded a Meridian gas station on their way to destinations across the country.

The Mississippi Highway Patrol will be watching traffic closely in hopes of making this a safe holiday weekend. There were no fatal accidents in this area last year during the thanksgiving weekend, and troopers hope keeping a high profile this year will keep the roads safe again.

"That's what we try to do. We just try to do high visibility details, along with speed enforcement," said Sgt. Ronnie Carter. “And as far as dui, always on the lookout for the impaired driver."

That's good news for Porch, who'll be driving back through this area again this weekend, which is, again, during one of the other busiest travel days of the year. H says he's not looking forward to it.

It is estimated that nearly 22 million people will take to the air for this Thanksgiving travel season, which began last Saturday and ends on Tuesday. That number exceeds the record number of passengers who flew during the same time period in 2004.

The Meridian Regional Airport will see only a fraction of those traveling from Mississippi, but officials say that passengers flying out of Meridian this holiday season are coming from other parts of the state, not just Meridian.

"An interesting thing this year is that we've had people driving to Meridian from Jackson because a lot of the hurricane travel has been out of Jackson and Meridian has had availability and have had better fares than Jackson on some routes people are traveling on," said Tom Williams, president of the Meridian Airport Authority.

Williams says that, with close parking and short security lines, the biggest reason to fly out of Meridian is convenience.