Which brings up another question - what do other people love about traveling (for pleasure, not business)? What are you looking for?
For us it’s scenery, new experiences, and meeting local people to chat and learn more. We scuba, we hike/walk, we occasionally go to museums or historical sites. We try local foods and/or restaurants - love street food even in places where one isn’t supposed to eat it! We sit on balconies or in front of our tent and just bask in the scenery taking it all in and relaxing.
What’s your ideal trip? (no wrong answer, of course)
We like discovering places that are different than where we live. We like eating the local food specialties. We hike at almost every one of our travel destinations. We like exploring the cultural aspects of a place: museums, churches, the music scene and other live performances/events. We like to immerse ourselves in a location, so we almost always rent an apartment within a neighborhood vs staying at a hotel (which saves on food costs and almost always makes for less expensive lodging). We like to do some scheduled and full days but also keep some days open, where we just wander around with no plans or ask the locals what their favs are. Due to the expense of travel, we usually plan for long vacations in order to hit more than one location per trip. We did a 5 and a 1/2 week cross country trip and a 2 and a half week, 3 country European trip, saw most everything we wanted to, and didn’t feel rushed.
The people who I know who are pleasure traveling right now are doing so because they either want to see family or feel like they desperately need a change of environment. That’s the case for me. We’ve taken one trip that we strategically planned (air and condo) and it went fine. We have 2 more planned for the summer. One to St. John on American, which makes me a little nervous. We should be fine once we arrive. One to Colorado later in August- non-stop on Southwest and we’ll be fine once we land. American’s middle seat policy concerns me, but I’m hoping with Tuesday travel the flights won’t be full. I’m working very hard at my job (from home) and it’s been pretty stressful. While my husband and I are in the vulnerable age group, we are really fit and healthy people, so we are willing to take some risks. We need the break.
Responding to @Creekland question -
We like to “experience” places as opposed to “see” places, and we don’t want to spend most of the time in the car. We also like natural settings more than “cities,” generally speaking. For example, the beach or the mountains, Where you can get lots of exercise. We’re more inclined to walk or hike or ride bikes than we are to spend a lot of time in a museum or Uber from place to place, but we do like to experience museums too.
We take “long” (compared to many people) walks/hikes, or ride our bikes around places, as opposed to just stopping at the scenic overlooks. For example, we walked 11 miles in a day in San Diego, and we walked to breakfast 3 miles each way in Asheville, and we rode our bikes 30ish miles on a couple of days in San Diego.
We like to try eating at local places, but we aren’t big risk takers “health-wise,” so we might be inclined to skip some options.
More than about a day sitting on the sand at the beach with nothing else to do might drive me crazy, but if we can walk, I’m happy. Where we stay in Maui you can walk at least 3 miles on/by the beach in each direction, which we often do. We’ve walked from one end of the beach to the other on 7 mile beach in Grand Cayman (it’s not really 7 miles, but I think it’s over 5).
We have many places on our bucket list, and I haven’t been to that many places outside the US. Multiple places in Italy, New Zealand and Australia are high on the list once we can travel again. (Likely won’t get to any of those until 2023 at this point, because of planning and other obligations).
I would love to return to Scotland, but so much of the fun of the trip was talking to the Scots; in the pubs and at the B & Bs, being in pubs playing Scottish folk music and on and on.
I’m not sure how much fun it would be going now and not feeling safe interacting with people.
Victoria Falls is at or near the top of our Bucket list right now. It was supposed to happen next summer between med school lad finishing school and starting residency - a family trip for all of us and DILs staying at the hostel there. We’d do a safari somewhere afterward since we’d be in the area.
Time will tell if it can happen. We’ve reserved nothing at this point. It’s just been researched from last Christmas break.
We missed our Germany/Poland trip and are just doing a very local Anniversary trip instead of flying “somewhere” fun. We were going to pick that out after returning from Poland. We picked a relatively local AirBnB instead - still somewhere we haven’t been at least!
I’m not sure where we’re going this Jan-Mar. We still haven’t let go of the idea of heading south somewhere. We have opted to wait and watch. Usually we’ve decided by now or at least around now.
Infection rate formula will be 10 per 100000 people on a 7 day rolling average or 10% positivity rate or above of total population, will be subject to 14 day quarantine.
As of today these are the states that meet that criteria:
Alabama
Arkansas
Arizona
Florida
North Carolina
South Carolina
Washington
Utah
Texas
NYS percent positivity rate as of yesterday was 1.1% out of a total of 51,000 tests.
I also wonder how it is monitored. I’ve wondered for a while if our college students will be quarantined on their OOS college campus for 2 weeks prior to classes. If so, will that be on campus? Off with some kind of proof? How far in advance will students be notified so travel arrangements can be made accordingly? Will the mode of transport to campus matter?
Isn’t this the same governor who didn’t want Rhode Island stopping cars coming in from NY?
A lot of this is what I call ‘COVID theater’. It will be impossible to enforce, but it prompts a headline that looks like the states are taking stern measures to curtail the pandemic. An island can do this with only a few airports to police. These states won’t be able to do anything.
I told baby kid that she was really lucky to be able to travel when she had the opportunity. She visited somewhere between 30 and 40 countries - I lost count. Let’s say not too many can brag about such long travel list.
I have little desire to travel internationally. Been to too many places already; long flights are too tiring. Other than Australia and Antarctica, there is nothing on my “must visit” list. There are wonderful places in North America that we have not yet been to. Will fix that in due course.
There is no way to enforce it. My neighboring state forbid out of state travelers for a while. I had to go to a nursery there. to pick up live plants. They wanted me to come in. When I brought up the ban, they said there is no one checking anyone’s license plate anywhere. I don’t know what to call this. Stupidity? Grand standing? Hypocrisy? Pomposity?
Doing it a couple of months ago when we were all overwhelmed is one thing. Many of us took confused measures. But now? Absurd.
It’s called ‘theater’. Pretending to be serious about containing the outbreak when nothing was said about thousands of people gathering in the streets to protest.