My husband and I are caving. We are driving more than 2,000 miles to see the grandkids.
We have protected ourselves against this lousy pandemic from the start. Our son and daughter-in-law have done the same. But we haven’t seen them since last winter, and the kids are growing and changing every day, especially Sebastian who has just turned one.
The adults all decided it would be okay for us to travel from Ohio to Washington state and form a “double bubble” with them, with all of us adhering to best practices.
For us, driving is the safest way to travel. Airline travel just doesn’t have our confidence so we’re hitting the road. We’re only staying at well-respected hotels which offer no-human-contact check-in. We will park the car, enter the hotel, go to our room, and open the door with an app on one of our phones. I will wipe down all surfaces of the room with a disinfectant cleaner upon arrival. We won’t leave our room until the next morning. We’ll do this for six nights.
We will eat drive-through food only, as well as food we’re packing.
I’m eager to see new parts of the country, but this isn’t the driving trip to see the grands that we always wanted to take. We’ll stop only at rest areas for bathroom breaks. No sight seeing, no stores, no attractions, no great local restaurants. I suspect it will be a fairly boring trip so we loaded our devices with audio books and podcasts.
We’re going into this confidently — but know there are no guarantees.
While I share this news with you, I know there are thousands of you who do not have this driving option. I know you want to see your grandkids are much as we want to see ours. I truly am sorry if my telling you about our trip has caused any pain.
This whole pandemic mess is so unfair … including for us long distance grandparents who were already forced to adjust to living far away and now must deal with severe travel restrictions. I wish happier days ahead for all of us.
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