As I mentioned in the last entry, Donna and I made an out-of-town trip that required an overnight stay. So, how do we feel about traveling at this point in the pandemic?
Actually, I'm feeling pretty good about the whole experience, and so is Donna. I had my concerns before the trip, but I think I will be much more comfortable in the future about traveling. Of course, I'm still looking forward to that "herd immunity" we hear about in the news.
Donna and I have both had our shots, so that in itself gives us a great deal of confidence. But we are also very, very careful. To be honest, this wasn't a totally new experience for us. For years and years now, we've been very careful in our travels. I don't know when we started being so careful, but we have been traveling with disinfectant sprays and wipes for a very long time. We have sanitizing gel in our car, and Donna has carried a small bottle in her purse for years. I now carry a small bottle as well. I also carry an extra mask and a pair of disposable gloves in my pocket any time I go out. Cargo pants are great, aren't they? If I didn't have cargo pants, I guess I would need a man bag or purse.
We were very careful about liquid intake because we did not want to stop to use public restrooms any more than we had to. Upon reaching our room, we both set to work wiping all handles and hard surfaces just as we've done for years and years, but this time we were more careful and thorough. We still had some running around to do, so as we were getting ready to leave, we gave the room, chairs, and bed a thorough disinfecting spray.
For our meals, we still did take-out. On Friday night, we got carry-out from Fazolis. We love that place. For breakfast, we ate at the hotel. They had sort of a "grab and go" breakfast. We went downstairs, approached a set of tables that were basically preventing us from reaching the counter where all the food was. A server took our order (eggs with chorizo, sausage links, and hash browns for each of us) and she dished our food into Styrofoam containers that we could take to our room. There were also packaged items, such as pastries, available.
On our way home, we stopped at the Dairy Queen in the small town of Sterling City. Just across the side street is a small road-side park. We ordered our burgers and went to the park to eat. Boy, those were good burgers.
We are good about wearing masks. It's a very small price to pay to help stop the spread of this disease; I simply can't understand why people complain as much they do about wearing masks. And I really don't understand how so many of them have made the wearing of masks a constitutional issue.
Lately, we've been double-masking, and that makes us feel even more comfortable. We wore our masks everywhere, including in our daughter's new home; in fact, if you go back and look at the previous post, you'll see one picture of Donna and our grandsons, and all are wearing masks. Now, the night before in our hotel room when the kids visited, everyone except me took our masks off. Michael, Courtney, and Xander have also had their shots, so everyone felt comfortable doing this. Because of some underlying health conditions I have, I continued to wear mine.
So, are we ready to travel again? We probably won't, just because this COVID battle is not over, but we certainly are confident that we can travel safely if we need to. And with mask mandates and such being lifted and just knowing how people behave -- or misbehave, as the case may be -- we expect that numbers will rise some again. Spring break for most schools is either this week or next week, so by the end of March there may well be another rise in numbers.
At least we now have a vaccine and more and more people are getting their shots. We are getting through this, but we just need people to be smart. Reopening all businesses at 100% capacity and removing the mask mandate in our state at the same time is not smart. I'd feel so much better about this if the mask mandate were left in place.
But we know we can travel if we need to. We just have to be careful and plan thoroughly. Donna is itching to go to a casino, but she is just going to have to wait a while longer. I don't see that happening any time soon. We still have not eaten inside a restaurant, though we do order carry-out fairly regularly. And I'm getting more comfortable shopping in grocery stores.
There are brighter days ahead; if we can only get people to do the right thing, they will be here sooner rather than later.
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