Final Reflections

Amber DeBono
Jul 22, 2020
3 min read

We spent yesterday looking through all our pictures and the blog posts. We can't believe what we were able to see in 2 1/2 weeks! And it's unbelievable we drove nearly 8000 miles! Also, I only saw a few typos, which is quite an accomplishment because I was often writing these blogs at midnight or 1 am! But even those few typos still drove me nuts!

Clearly, we discovered that this isn't just the summer of COVID - it's the summer of the BLM movement. In fact, several pictures showed that businesses often had signs regarding their COVID policies alongside signs demonstrating their support for BLM. It was surprising, but encouraging, to see strong support for BLM in predominantly white areas like Iowa and North Dakota. My take: the summer of 2020 will go down in history as the summer of COVID and the fight for racial equality and justice.

Over the last two and a half weeks, we saw some very obvious differences when it comes to the COVID pandemic. Generally, smaller towns seemed to ignore best practices to lessen the spread of COVID and people under 30 years old were less likely to wear masks than people over 30. People seemed especially unlikely to wear masks if they were outside, but this is often when people will have unexpected sneezes - which have been known to send the virus much further than regular breathing. We wish more people followed the signage at the national parks to wear a mask whenever they were closer than 6 feet from other people. Do some people not know what 6 feet is?

In the end, you can't control other people, but fortunately you have the power to keep yourself safe even when others aren't following the best practices. Here are some of our top tips to travel safely during COVID times:

1. Buy and wear non-medical N95 masks from websites like CUFY.com.

2. Wash your hands whenever you have touched anything the public might also touch. When that's not possible, be sure to use hand sanitizer - keep some in the car and your purse/pocket.

3. Stay at well-rated hotels. Pay less attention to star ratings (although we always stayed at 2.5 stars or above) and more attention to actual customer reviews. On a 10-point scale, we recommend staying at hotels with an 8+ rating or a 4+ on a 5-point scale. Read the comments from reviews left since April 2020 and see if anyone complains about cleanliness issues.

4. Although we opted to stay in hotels, an even safer option may be renting an RV. We saw many people with RVs from Cruise America. It's important to keep in mind that this would be a more expensive option than renting a car and staying in hotels like we did. We wish we could have stayed in more places like the tiny cabins offered by Bryce Valley Lodging. This seemed like a good middle ground and offered the most safety from COVID.

5. Stay outside as much as possible. COVID is less likely to spread outside because UV rays and the wind can lessen the exposure to COVID. I would recommend avoiding anything touristy that requires you to be inside for long periods of time unless you enjoy wearing an N95 mask for long periods of time - my limit is about 20 minutes.

Here is a breakdown for the cost of our 18-day, 17-night trip:

Car rental: $1313.00

Hotels: $1575.39

Gas: $523.47

Total: $3,411.86 (plus food, beer, entrance fees, etc.)

Here is an approximation for the route of our trip. Stars indicate where we spent the night.