Things Could Be Worse
It’s been on our minds for months now. How will the global pandemic impact our Park-to-Park Tour? The answer: with great disappointment and some reluctance, we have decided to post-pone year one of the trip to 2021.
The plan was to begin on July 21st in Rocky Mountain National Park. We would venture through Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, North Cascades, and Olympic, concluding at Mount Rainier. Each Park has been affected by Covid-19 in different ways and decisions about access and restrictions have been left to Park superintendents in cooperation with state, local, and tribal authorities.
It seemed like each Park has had some level of closure that would negatively impact our plans. A camping reservation lost in Rocky Mountain. A horseback riding trip canceled in Grand Teton. Major restrictions to services at Yellowstone. A likely closure of the Eastern side of Glacier. The need to rebook accommodations at Lake Chelan. Uncertain access to the coastal areas at Olympic. None of these alone would cancel the trip. Even a half dozen setbacks might be able to be overcome for such a once in a lifetime adventure.
But that’s just it. This is once in a lifetime, and we want to do it right. Plus, we don’t know what additional changes and closures we might encounter if we stay the course. No one knows what the virus will do. The safe choice is to cancel or postpone.
The decision came with a lot of consternation. We’d spent so much time planning, and the plans were meticulous…down to the hour for 30 days. Many reservations had been made as far as a year in advance. Many of the campsite bookings were made precisely six months to the date of arrival, and we were lucky to get the spots we did. Not to mention, not everything is fully refundable. The good news is that we hadn’t purchased plane tickets, and it seems that most of our hotel and transportation bookings will provide a reimbursement of some portion of the fees.
We keep reminding the girls that—yes a year is a long time—but it could be worse. We are all happy and healthy and employed and able to stay home and safe and avoid infection as much as possible. Not everyone is so lucky, and things may get worse for the country before they get better. The virus doesn’t care if we have to postpone, and neither should we. We’ll use the year to make the trip even better.
And so, through it all, there is a silver lining. We’re already thinking through how we might spend the 30 days we had carved out for this trip. Lucky for us, there are two National Parks in our very own state…just a short plane ride away. We’ll see if the virus lets us at least check out the National Parks of Hawai’i. We’ll call it “year zero”. Stay tuned to see what we manage to accomplish.