To Travel or Not To Travel This Summer

Honestly, I don’t know what to do here. I’m having a first world problem. So I feel a little guilty posting about it. Almost a year ago, I put down payments on a big National Parks adventure. Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and Glacier. Some of the best places on Earth. I’ve been excited about this adventure for a long time. And I was really excited that I got to use “writing fund” money for a lot of the down deposits. But now with COVID-19, I’m just not sure if it’s the right time to travel.

One part of me wants to go out on these adventures. Having these adventures with my family are what I live for. Truly. But with a global pandemic going on, is it the right time to travel? Is it the healthy, safe thing to do?

It seems to me there are four major places/considerations. There’s the travel, whether it’s by plane or car. Then there’s what you are doing. Will you be in a crowded area? There’s where you’re staying. And there’s how you’re going to eat.

My awesome wife found this article by Joanna Reed and National Geographic. It’s a good place to start. It asks the question, Is It Safe to Travel Now? The answer seems to be, “maybe?” but here are ways to mitigate the health risks. They echo travel suggestions made by the CDC.

The CDC website lists seven questions to ask when deciding whether or not to travel:

Is  COVID-19 spreading  where you’re going? You can get infected while traveling.Is  COVID-19 spreading  in your community? Even if you don’t have symptoms, you can spread COVID-19 to others while traveling.Will you or those you are traveling with be within 6 feet of others during or after your trip? Being within 6 feet of others increases your chances of getting infected and infecting others.Are you or those you are traveling with  more likely to get very ill from COVID-19 ? Older adults and people of any age who have a serious underlying medical condition are at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19.Do you live with someone who is  more likely to get very ill from COVID-19 ? If you get infected while traveling you can spread COVID-19 to loved ones when you return, even if you don’t have symptoms.Does the state or local government where you live or at your destination require you to stay home for 14 days after traveling? Some state and local governments may require people who have recently traveled to stay home for 14 days.If you get sick with COVID-19, will you have to miss work or school? People with COVID-19 disease need to stay home until they are no longer considered infectious.

It’s always good to ask these questions. If you’re weighing whether or not to travel, you should, too. Texas and Montana aren’t “bad” as of this writing. We’re in this middle-ground that gets subjective. But as an overweight man with hypertension, things don’t look great. Based on CDC guidelines, I should probably put it off.

Fly vs. Drive

But if I do decide to travel, half the family will be flying to meet me while I would drive up. For my family traveling by airplane, the concern is less the actual flight than being in security lines. That’s according to the articles, which talk about HEPA filters on the planes. But a filter won’t help if the person sitting within six feet of me has COVID-19, will it? Roughly, for a Southwest Airlines flight, I think that’s the eight closest people to me. (Southwest seats are 17-inches wide., so that includes at the very least the two people on either side of you, plus the three in front and the three behind.)

In a car, as long as everybody else in the car is okay, then you should be okay. The main concern is bathroom breaks and getting gas. I think a big bottle of sanitizer would help with the latter, but the problem with the former is standing in a long line of people waiting for the bathroom. You’d have to wear a mask when you went inside, and you’d have to wash your hands. Again, these seems like something you can mitigate, right? As long as you bring like a hundred masks with you.

Crowds

Being in the National Parks is actually my least concern. I’ve been there in the heavy season, and I still think there are lots of ways to avoid crowds. If you show up early or late, you will be there when few others are there. And most trails are not giant crowds. “Most.” If we show up to watch Old Faithful at 1pm, there’s going to be a giant crowd no matter what.

Having hiked in all three parks, I think again that even when there’s heavy foot-traffic, the trails are generally wide and probably not as populated as you’re thinking.

Where to Stay

Hotels, however, seem to be a whole other issue. Because if the air conditioning ducts are connected, then you are breathing the same air as all the people around you. Even if you social distance, does that do anything if you are sharing the air? So staying in old Many Glacier Hotel, which has been a dream of mine, may have to be cancelled even if we do decide to go. I figure it is better to stay in a motel with an outside air conditioner.

So, I don’t know where to go with this. We’ve been going back and forth a hundred times. One day we think we’ll do it. Another we think we won’t. It doesn’t help that this one hotel my wife called, they said that they were expecting a really low attendance and suspected that we’d be upgraded just because there weren’t enough people. (Personally, I doubt the upgrade. I suspect it’s them trying to keep us from cancelling.) If we do cancel, my wife was told we’d have to cancel through upper management. We couldn’t just cancel with the person on the other side of the phone.

This could be the year for Air B&Bs and cabins. Because at least this way, we are social distancing. We may need to go to grocery stores to pick up food, and I don’t know whether or not that option will always be viable, but at least we aren’t staying in the same residence as a few hundred other people.

How Do I Eat?

This one is the most perplexing. Either I can bring a giant cooler and make a stop every other day to pick up food, or the family can eat out. Both are risky. Should I wear a mask into every restaurant and only remove it to eat? It sounds silly when I say it. If governments and restaurants have good social distancing measures, we should be eating with only 25-50% capacity. So inside the restaurant shouldn’t be a problem. There’s only two possible problems I see in the restaurant situation:

Restaurants are more open than they should be. So maybe the restaurant should be at 25% capacity, but the governor is allowing the restaurant to be open at 50-75% capacity. Or maybe restrictions are lifted? I don’t know about the restaurants around you, but what I often see if a moderate-sized crowd waiting outside a restaurant because it is only allowing a small number of people inside. Lower capacity seating doesn’t help if you have to wait 25 minutes in a crowd of 20 strangers waiting on your table to open up. And I see this really compounded on travel.

So the best way to mitigate restaurant health issues is to make reservations. This means less roaming on adventures and more structured schedules, which if that’s your thing, you’ll really enjoy. If like us, you prefer to wander and find a place to eat, you might have extra risk.

However, restaurants in national parks aren’t open. Or they’re grab-and-go. For road travel, there are drive-throughs. Those lines may be long, though. There is also curbside pickup, but I don’t know how effective that will be in remote areas of Montana and Wyoming.

So, I don’t know what the best answer is. I’m still not sure. I think with enough preparation, a perfect adventure can be planned. But I’ve had a mantra since May 1 when states began to open up: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And maybe that’s what summer will look like in 2020. I can, but perhaps I shouldn’t…