What does a socially-distancing summer trip planning aficionado do without plans for a summer trip?
That’s what I’m wrestling with as we reach the doorstep of the summer travel season. It’s Memorial Day Weekend, and the biggest plans most of us have is a journey to the grocery store. At least we get to dress up … by wearing a mask.
I don’t mean to complain. My family and I are healthy. We have jobs. We have toilet paper. And remarkably, we’re all still talking to each other.
But like everyone, boy, do we long to be free. Back to the good, old healthy days when you could come and go as you please. No concern for where you went or who you talked to. And you could safely plot out summer treks that took you to far-off exotic lands filled with adventure and intrigue. Like Orlando!
Or somewhere even further, and more exotic. Where there are waterfalls. Or cotton candy machines. Or skyscrapers. Or travel scams by street hustlers who can spot you a mile away because your shirt screams, “Easiest money you’ll make all day!”
Man, what I wouldn’t give to be ripped off right now!
I love to travel. And maybe more than even the travel itself, I love to plan it. Right now there are books on Maine and Atlantic Canada and Quebec sitting on a side table collecting dust. I haven’t opened them in months. Dreams of flying up to Boston, renting a car to get us to Acadia National Park and then venturing through Nova Scotia and maybe even Newfoundland have been dashed. Just like Disney World, Canada is closed.
I mean, I think it’s a little different than Disney World. Their animatronics ride is still running, but the coronavirus border closure has been extended to June 22. Travel around the world has slowed to a trickle, and we travel bugs are struggling.
Recently, I’ve found myself venturing into dreams of travel. Literally. Last night I had a dream I was buying three seats on a foreign train using a phone app. That was it – the WHOLE DREAM! I woke up feeling flush and invigorated.
I find I’m drawn to travel stories online. Ones that jump out and catch my attention, like a headline that read: “RV rentals increase 650% as coronavirus changes how Americans vacation.”
Yeahhhhh … an RV!!! Maybe?
The idea started swirling around in my brain. I wrestled with it a bit. Because I’m not an RV guy. I’m not good driving big vehicles, and have a tendency to shave off the sides of buildings.
My only experience in an RV was as a kid with my dad and brother on one of our wild excursions we took each summer. We trekked off to North Carolina in it. If I’m not mistaken, he rented it from a place that doubled as a salvage yard. Or at least, that was how it appeared to my young eyes with the rows of RVs that looked like they had rolled down cliff-sides before being pressed back into service.
I only have two surviving memories of our one-and-only RV adventure. My first was when we realized they had forgotten to include the RV sewage hose. It was a lesson we learned when the tank filled up and alerted us with a foul sloshing on the floor of the shower. In all my years of trying, I still haven’t found something that can top that pungent chemical smell mixed with the un-pleasantries of human waste. (For fear the EPA is listening, I shall not tell you how we remedied that one.)
The second is how the RV decided the sewage hose was the least of its problems and promptly died near Cherokee, N.C. I didn’t say “broke” – it DIED! We finished the trip in a car that smelled like pungent chemical vinyl and cigarette smoke.
And now an article about RVs has me dreaming of the open road and the freedom, and safety, an RV might bring, if things ever fully open up and get better.
How far an amateur “trip planner” has sunk!
Then I have to remind myself I’m stranded in St. Augustine – the Nation’s Oldest City and one of Florida’s most popular tourist destinations. As things hopefully improve, then carefully and safely open, what better place could I be? People spend their time planning to come here. And plenty of local folks dependent on non-existent visitors are hurting right now. Maybe sometime this summer it will be time to carefully and safely “visit” them. Maybe it should be the summer of staycations! Helping our own communities get back on their feet, and keep some of those dollars at home where they’re needed.
Could also beat shaving the sides off of buildings, and having to figure out how to drain an RV sewage tank. After all, there’s no place like home, and you don’t even need a travel guide book for that.