We all know how much coronavirus has affected people’s ability to fly from place to place. International flights are nearly gone, and even domestic flights are greatly curtailed. I think most people’s interest in flying is probably at an all-time low, anyway, due to health safety concerns.
That still leaves driving as an option, but with so many states mandating quarantines once you’ve arrived, it makes road trips even that much less enticing, depending on a person’s individual circumstances.
However, sometimes you just have no choice. And if that’s the case, driving from one state to another is still a viable option. However, as you can imagine, things are different from what we’re used to if you drive across the country right now.
Chris Quintana is the Education Enterprise Reporter for USA Today. After living in Washington D.C. for the past 3 years, he recently made the decision to drive back home to New Mexico, to help his mother and two younger brothers after the recent and unexpected death of his stepfather.
The 3-day trek was apparently like none he had ever taken before.
Click here to read Chris’s story.
His story was posted on USA Today.
My Thoughts
My own personal driving experience in the past 4 weeks has generally been to the supermarket and back. The round-trip ride is about 2 miles. However, I got to go to my general practitioner today for a follow-up visit, and he’s about 14 miles from our house. I had to drive on I-4 and it was an I-4 like none I’ve ever seen. We’re still under a statewide “stay-at-home” orders, save for work, medical appointments and other “essential” reasons (like WWE matches??? Yay Flori-DUH) so hardly anybody was on the road. If you’ve ever been to central Florida, you know that just doesn’t happen! So it gave me a small flavor of what Chris went through.
As I read Chris’s story, it reminded me of the conversation I had with my friends, “Karla” and “Jeff.” They’re the couple who were stuck on a “healthy” cruise ship for 3 weeks until they were finally allowed to disembark in San Diego. Karla has some issues with her immune system, so they were very conflicted about taking a plane from San Diego to their home in Florida. She had heard stories of planes with next to no one on them, as well as nearly full planes – and the last thing she wanted was, understandably, to sit next to someone who was COVID positive. But on the other hand, it was in the earlier days of counties and states “locking down,” and my friends were genuinely concerned if they would find hotels, gas stations, restaurants, etc. open during their cross-country drive. They decided flying was the lesser of two evils, but based on Chris’s account, it sounds like they probably could have driven and been OK. 20/20 hindsight, huh?
If you find yourself having to drive to another state, you might want to have a useful reference of what’s at the next exit (or next few exits), so you can try to call before you get there. This post has several reliable ones.
#stayhealthy #stayathome #washyourhands
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and get emailed notifications of when we post. Or maybe you’d like to join our Facebook group – we have 12,000+ members and we talk and ask questions about travel (including Disney parks), creative ways to earn frequent flyer miles and hotel points, how to save money on or for your trips, get access to travel articles you may not see otherwise, etc. Whether you’ve read our posts before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.