It’s the beginning of August 2021 and we have a couple of trips planned. One in September and the next in October.
It’s been about a year and a half since the pandemic started. During which, I had no desire to go anywhere. And certainly no desire to get on an airplane anytime during that whole mess.
I know of many people who continued to travel throughout the pandemic. I was perfectly OK waiting to see how everything panned out before jumping back out into the world at large.
Other than myself, I have my wife and two children to look out for. For me, the idea of “risking” their health for any trip wasn’t worth it. We were just fine enjoying ourselves at home.
I may sound as if I’m contradicting myself, since now there is this new delta variant of COVID.
And we have these trips planned.
I said it before and I’ll say it again. I neither give nor receive the coronavirus.
Now, we’re safe about it. Really.
But some would hear the above statement and want to argue with me. They’d want to prove to me their point of view and how I’m wrong.
Well I’m here to tell you I don’t care about any of that. This is my website and you have no voice here. It’s my voice – it’s my conversation and you can’t interrupt me.
So listen up…
OK, I’m just kidding.
What I’m really interested in finding out during our first trip since COVID burst into the world is this…
By taking this trip we’ll be testing a theory.
An unofficial theory.
One that has come about more through observation than anything else. (I think all theories begin to formulate through observation.)
It goes way back to when I was a child. I don’t remember my exact age, I might have been 7 or 8 years old.
At the time my father wanted to start taking us on more trips. He wanted to travel to some of the mountain states. Since we lived in Florida, that meant the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and other states in the region.
But he wanted to visit these states and stay at campgrounds. In a tent, with a fire to cook our food on, and all of that.
Now he planned this out before traveling several hours to another state to figure out the whole camping thing ,which was smart.
Very smart as you’ll learn in a moment.
In the city where I grew up, there are many county parks. One in particular is larger than all of the others. It has two lakes, at that time it still had a gun range, an archery range, an outdoor amphitheater, and….a campground.
It was at this campground my father wanted to try out camping before traveling several states away and camping. Better to figure things out on a local scale first.
So he acquired a tent, one or two cots (one for my mother who wasn’t keen about sleeping on the ground even if it was in a tent), sleeping bags for my brother, my dad, and I, some folding chairs, and all the necessary items for cooking on an open fire.
He rented a spot at the local county park campground. We loaded everything up and headed to the campground for our first adventure.
As an aside, one of the rules at the campground was that after a certain time, you couldn’t enter the park. Most of the parks close at dusk.
We got to the park, checked in at the front gate, found our campsite, and set up the tent.
I don’t remember if we actually ate dinner cooked on the fire or not. The whole purpose of this first “test” camping expedition was to acclimate our family to the experience…setting up the tent, finding out if everyone liked it, how is it to actually sleep in sleeping bags on the ground, and how to pack everything up when it was time to leave.
We got everything set up, the sun went down, and we all nestled into our sleeping bags, my mother settled into her cot with some bedding.
Then we fell fast asleep.
The next thing I remember is the most torrential thunderstorm I can remember up until that point in my life.
Brilliant flashes of lightning…
Loud ominous thunderclaps…
And pouring rain!
My father had prepared for some rain. One of the first things he did after getting the tent was to set it up in our backyard and give it a heavy dose of water repellant.
Water “repellent.”
Now, if you don’t know, Florida is in the subtropical region.
This means we have some interesting weather.
In the summer months it’s a given that we’ll have pouring rainstorms just about everyday. Most of the time these daily storms come complete with thunder and lightning.
Fun fact: Florida is THE lightning strike capital of the US.
The day we chose to try out camping at the local park was no exception to the daily pouring rain.
I remember waking up due to all of the commotion. The loud crackling of lightning bolts, followed by booming thunder, and lots and lots of rain. And standing water in the bottom of our tent. Yes, on the inside. It was raining that much.
I think it was one of the worst rain storms we’d ever seen.
It didn’t take long for my mother to decide she’d had enough and wanted to leave.
Right Now! In the middle of this horrendous storm.
And it didn’t matter that the park was closed – they closed the gate at the entrance at dusk.
I don’t know how my father ever got my mother home. But soon enough he was back. It was still pouring rain.
Our first expedition camping at the local county park was a wet one. All I remember was sleeping on the cot (since my mother wasn’t there), standing water in the bottom of the tent, and my father sleeping in a folding chair he had brought into the tent from outside.
We made it through the night alive. But otherwise my father’s test of our camping experience was a disaster.
Not one to let a minor setback deter him, my father still had this desire to camp all up and down the mountains of the Eastern United States.
So nearly every summer growing up, from that point forward, we’d spend a week or two camping.
I have to admit, it was fun.
And I did enjoy it.
But here’s where things started to get interesting.
It seemed as though no matter when we went camping…or where we went camping…or which state we visited…the rain would ALWAYS come.
I’m serious. It became a bit of a joke between my mother and the children. Kentucky could be having the worst drought in the last fifty years.
When we decided to visit and camp…the rain would come.
Seriously.
We’d come into town and see the dam in the river that thousands of gallons of water flowed over each day. Dry as a bone and the water level below the dam level by two feet.
By the time we got done camping there, due to all of the rain that we seemingly brought with us, the dam would be back up to pre-drought levels. And the water would be flowing freely once more.
Next year. We decided to camp way up in the mountains. No forecast for rain anytime soon.
Boom! Pouring rain.
If you’ve never seen how slippery that mountain clay gets when it’s wet, it’s comparable to oil on glass. Nothing seems to have any traction at all. Not your shoes, not even the tires of a fully packed 1980 Ford E 250 fifteen passenger van.
I remember trying to push the van with my brothers…to no effect. We’d slip and fall, the van’s tires would just spin. I’m telling you it was slippery!
Well, it seemed without fail, every year we went camping, it would rain…a lot…no matter where we went or when we went.
I’m telling you all of this as background to my theory.
Here’s my more recent observations.
In September 2019, my wife, our two children, and I took a trip. We went to visit my wife’s brother and his family. They had recently moved to Ohio from Virginia and they wanted us to visit.
We’d never been to Ohio, so we went.
While we were there…
A hurricane threatened Florida.
I live in Florida – have my whole life.
So when the state gets “threatened” by a hurricane, I don’t get alarmed one bit.
I know that most of the time the hurricane will blow back into the ocean, or curve around to the Gulf of Mexico, or otherwise not do much of anything.
The news will make it seem as though it’s the second coming of Christ and the end of the world as we know it. And that starts people panicking. This includes the airport.
While we were in Ohio enjoying our little getaway, they closed all of the airports. We got stuck in Ohio for several days.
We did make it back home after an extended vacation – which was nice. We were staying with my wife’s brother and his family. He was OK with us staying extra and we weren’t paying like if we were staying in a hotel.
We did rack up extra fees at the parking garage at the airport. And it cost us more to have the dogs stay extra at the boarder.
But otherwise the extra forced vacation and extra time with my wife and kids was nice.
Fast forward to March 2020.
Our children are on spring break and we are all visiting Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC.
The first few days were without incident. But that Tuesday afternoon we found out just how bad things had gotten due to COVID 19.
We went out to a restaurant we ate at a day earlier. The food was excellent and the service good. And it was packed.
But on that Tuesday afternoon when we walked in, no one was there and most of the lights were off.
My wife got the attention of someone who was sweeping the floor. She asked them if we could be seated.
“Oh, we’re closed. You can order takeout from the bar if you want, but we’re closed.”
We sat at the bar and ordered food. Not ideal, but we had taken a leisurely morning exploring with our kids and were really hungry. While we waited for our food to be prepared, I inquired of the bartender what was going on.
“At 11 o’clock this morning the governor of North Carolina declared a state of emergency and all restaurants are to be closed to the public until further notice.”
I asked him about the restaurant located in the resort where we were staying. “You’ll have to check with the front desk to find out, but I think they’ll be closed too.”
We sat outside and ate our food. Which, by the way, didn’t quite taste the same. If you’ve ever eaten expensive food out of a styrofoam takeout carton with plastic forks, you know exactly what I mean.
We got back to the hotel we were staying at and asked the front desk what was going on. They informed us that both of the in resort restaurants were closed, but assured me we could still order room service. The desk clerk handed me a one page room service menu.
There was nothing fancy about any of the options on the room service menu.
We also found out that everything on the Biltmore property, except the resort, was closed. As well as all shops, attractions, and restaurants in the entire state.
We were informed that no new guests were allowed into the resort, but guests already staying there were allowed to stay. At least until they got further instructions.
I didn’t want to pay for a resort where all our family can do is stay in our room and order room service.
My more pressing concern was what if they decided to close all hotels and resorts. Or worse…what if they start closing the airports?
As soon as we got to our room I booked the first flight out of there.
We normally won’t take any connecting flights, but in this case we had no other options.
We got a Delta connecting flight to Atlanta, then a second flight back to Orlando.
It was a little spooky when there were only ten people in the entire airport.
The reality of just how bad things had gotten, and so fast, sunk in when there were only nine passengers on an entire airplane.
We got home late, but we got home!
The corona virus had hit epidemic levels. And we all know and lived through that reality.
Here’s my unofficial observation…
Growing up going on vacation, rain came almost without fail.
Now, decades later the last two vacations my family took…one brought a hurricane, the second brought the coronavirus.
Here’s my theory.
By planning the next two trips, I’ll be testing the theory that any vacation I go on brings some sort of calamity.
We’re just a few weeks from the first trip.
I’ll give an update after this trip, Then another update after our trip in October.
If there is never an update…you know it’s gotten REALLY bad!