For summer travel, no fear factor

In Boston the Duck Tours are jammed. Terror warnings? Tourists lined up for the amphibious bus excursions say they take them seriously, but they're not hiding at home. Terrorists "can't scare me out of traveling," says Atlantan Michael Agurkis, boarding an ungainly tour vehicle.

San Diego's zoo is as popular as ever. Resident Debra Spencer isn't thinking about suspicious parcels as she wheels her toddler around the famous naturalistic animal exhibits. "I can't live my life that way," she says.

In Chicago the skydeck of the Sears Tower is open for business. This is so even though some officials see the nation's tallest building as a possible target of attack. Asked whether he would change travel plans if the FBI puts out another alert, Larry Maglicco, visiting from Phoenix, says "not really."

As the nation enters its first summer of the "new normal," Americans are moving again, if warily. Outside New York and Washington, the recent spate of dire warnings about coming attacks seems distant and appears to have had little effect on travel plans.

The mood of ordinary Americans seems a mix of acceptance and defiance. More terrorism could change things overnight. But there is little wallowing in fear. Polls and anecdotal evidence point instead to a strong national recovery of emotion

"The level of anxiety is clearly down," says Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, for instance, nine in 10 Americans reported some sort of personal reaction to the terrorist attacks on the nation, such as feeling numb or having difficulty sleeping.

By February, that had dropped to five in 10, according to recently released data from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Last fall 70 percent of respondents reported crying over the attacks, according to a Gallup/CNN survey. By this March the figure had dropped to 21 percent.

Only about 25 percent of respondents to a recent ABC News/Washington Post survey said the events of Sept. 11 changed they way they lived.

Of course, that a quarter of Americans say their lives are different is still significant. And the overall numbers hide a number of geographical disparities. Not surprisingly, residents of Washington and New York are much more likely to say they're worried about possible attacks to come. "People are much more sensitive to government warnings in the bigger cities," says Ms. Bowman.

But until now, worries that a frightened America would hunker in backyards this summer rather than venture out in the great annual social migration appear off the mark.

Boston's Duck Tour business hasn't suffered from the recent terrorist warnings, for instance. Though things dropped last fall, since then the amphibious buses have been busier than normal. Sales representative Brian McGillivray's theory is that they have benefited from the one lasting effect of Sept. 11 on most Americans – a reluctance to fly. "A lot of local people are staying local," says Mr. McGillivray. "School groups that might have gone to D.C. or New York are staying here, so we have a lot of kids from New Hampshire and Maine."

Indeed, Duck buses are packed with kids at all stages of adolescence, quacking loudly for amusement.

Nor is it hard to find tourists who drive to Boston – and who aren't shying away from public spaces – elsewhere in the city.

Philadelphians Shane Famille and Amy Bratelli were wandering through the Boston Public Garden on a recent sun-dappled afternoon. They had no hesitation about their six hour drive up from the city of brotherly cheese steaks, though Mr. Famille admits that driving over New York City's George Washington Bridge did give him pause.

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