While I shouldn’t have to state it, Covid-19 is horrible. My wife Kim and I have no desire for you, or us, to be intubated, suffer a painful death, or recover only to struggle with debilitating side-effects. We’re in our sixties, I’m a cancer survivor, and I’m getting the feeling that our youthful indestructibility is starting to wan. So why risk a vacation? Some might think we were foolish and selfish for not staying home all summer. But we didn’t. I’m not here to defend the choice. But, if you do go on vacation, please be smart about it.
Plans: First, we changed our plans. We were considering a trip to the East Coast, visiting friends and relatives from South Carolina to Maine. Instead, we chose the Great Plains, where social distancing is practically in the name.
Transportation: Driving instead of flying seems like an obvious choice. Using Costco, for $575 dollars, we rented a 2019 Santa Fe, unlimited mileage, July 8 through 28. And we made sure the car was clean. No coronavirus. If we had to, we could sleep in it.
Hotels: In 18 days we stayed in five hotels, none for more than one night. We approached each hotel as if planning an assault. If the front desk clerk wasn’t wearing a mask, we left. We entered each room with a bag of cleaning supplies, and before setting anything down, sprayed Lysol everywhere – light switches, doorknobs, toilets, TV remote and so on. If the surface wasn’t visibly wet from disinfectant, we sprayed again. We of course washed our hands frequently. We threw hotel pillows on the floor, pulled down the bedspread, and slept on top of the remaining covers. We used our own pillows and towels. We bought our own sheets; my talented wife had sewn them to resemble sleeping bags. Likely, we left hotel rooms more sterilized than when we found them.
Food/Restaurants: We packed along plenty of food. When we dined out, we dined outside. Since we were avoiding the interstate, we found hidden gems like the Hungry Dog in Mitchell, SD and the Hays House in Council Grove, KS, our rental Santa Fe coincidentally on the Santa Fe Trail.
Relatives: We respected “Covid bubbles.” We stayed four nights with my brother and his wife in Casper, Wyoming, the state with the lowest population, most of our time on the high plains with not another soul in sight. From there, we spent a delightful evening with my niece and family near Saratoga, Wyoming, their neighbors far away and the sky open for comet viewing. Next, we stayed with my delightful cousin and husband in Montrose, Colorado for two nights, and then four nights with our wonderful daughter and her boyfriend in Lakewood close to Denver, where masks are mandatory. All relatives took reasonable, highly acceptable Covid precautions.
Public Restrooms: Not once did we have to use a rest stop, the kind of place where you often stand in pee pooling around the urinal, or a gas station bathroom with black halos around sticky door handles. On back roads, it is very easy to find gravel offshoots that have no traffic. We had the world as our restroom, sharing the range with the livestock, the wide open plains as our crapper. (For all I know, this might be illegal, but the chances of getting caught seem pretty slim.)
Outside Public spaces: Of the three public outside attractions, Devil’s Tower was the worst, crowded with unappreciative tourists meandering and clumping together, very few with masks, many going off the paved trail, pushing past branches with Lakota prayer flags. My wife was smart enough to wait near our rental while I ran the trail around the tower, startling tourists as I zipped by. Sioux Falls was better, although many wore no mask, and we had to come close to people while crossing a foot bridge. The Black Canyon outside Montrose was the best, not very crowded and plenty of room, people respecting social distance and many wearing masks even while hiking. Also, it was a hidden gem, spectacular views, sheer cliffs two thousand feet down to the Gunnison River.
Not-so-public outside spaces: Mostly, we were outside hiking, bouldering, rock-climbing, and fly-fishing. Hawkeye Point, Iowa’s highpoint is technically more public than not, but we saw no one there. On the gravel roads near Bowman leading to North Dakota’s highest point, White Butte, we were gloriously alone with miles of open space. And we met only three other “high-pointers” on the roughly four-mile hike to the top and back through rattlesnake county.
In Bowman, we looked for a place to eat outside and walked from our hotel down a deserted Main Street. A mile or so later, at the end of the road, the restaurant we had in mind was closed, boarded up. On our walk back, we came across an obviously inebriated old guy, probably about my age, lounging on a narrow bench in front of a bar, cigarette attached to his lower lip. We were social-distancing when he hollered, “Hey!”
We stopped and he told us a joke that now in retrospect, if you think about it enough, seems perfectly apocalyptic.
“How do you cook a panda?”
“I don’t know, how?”
“In a pan. Duh!”
