Gas prices are going to continue to go up. The only reason they've been as low as they have for the last year or so is because of the depressed economy. Now that we're finally beginning to see a recovery you're going to see the price increase and inflation begin to tick upward as well.
I think this is pretty much the reason they dropped down for a while--slightly reduced worldwide demand.
I can't say that what the U.S. is experiencing is really much of a recovery. It's possible that we're merely reaching the next peak in the economic cycle and that it looks better than a year or two ago by comparison while the overall trend is sharply downward. (Scary thought, huh, that there really won't be a recovery and that this might be the peak in the cycle; what happens when we go into the next trough?)
Regardless of where we are in the economic cycle, the price of oil is going to have to go up simply because it exists in finite quantities but the world's population and the population of people who are consuming oil is increasing. Eventually we will begin to approach a state where the demand for oil is close to equaling or outpacing the world's ability to pump out the ever dwindling amounts of oil in the Earth's crust, a condition known as
Peak Oil.
So, gas prices and the prices of just about everything else that relies on oil (such as food) are going to keep going up and it will transform our society. If the situation becomes extreme, we might even have a mass die-off.