Travel When You Can
Our Treasures of the Med. Southbound was cancelled, so we just booked a week at the Evergreen Lodge in Yosemite. We routinely visit the Ahwahnee Hotel which Tauck uses on one of their tours. It will not be the same as our many other visits, but we are really looking forward to it. We need to support all of these people who have provided us with so much enjoyment. Those of us who can afford to support the travel industry should not stay home a moment longer than absolutely necessary.
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We are still in lockdown. We are supposed to be coming out to the next phase next Friday, but the motto for that phase is ‘Safer at Home’ so that is what we will do if we can.
I'm all for supporting the travel industry and look forward to resuming my travels, but that won't happen until masks, social distancing, temperature checks and all the other attendant travel barricades are removed. I travel to learn, experience and enjoy, but I won't travel under these conditions. If that means no travel for now, so be it.
For domestic travel, I might be satisfied if I could personally buy the basics recommended for travel - masks and hand sanitizer. I have a couple of masks so no issue there, but trying to find hand sanitizer is harder than getting toilet paper. I just want to be able to buy hand sanitizer in the grocery stores. When I can I think it will tell me something about the state of the country and people's minds. It's impossible to buy hand sanitizer in Tucson, at least it has been for our family. Don't know what it's like elsewhere.
On a happier note, I was able to get a haircut yesterday for the first time in two months.
The person cutting my hair said that everyone is cutting at least one inch off. I told her that the shop was going to be carting off a record amount of hair this week. My hair was the longest it has been since college. The place I get my haircut charged a $4 surcharge to cover the required cleaning procedures. That was fine with me. Both myself and the haircutter wore a mask throughout the process. When it was time to cut around the ears. I removed the strap and held the mask to my face. We repeated the process for the other ear. Anyway, 5 pounds lighter a happy camper left the hair cutting shop. 
I had my fleece shorn yesterday!
Smiling Sam, not true. Frys has barrels of hand sanitizer bottles I bought several 3.95 each.
Have not had my hair cut since this started. I look like a cotton ball.
S35flyer - Perfect, I'm headed to Frys. We normally shop at Bashas or Safeway. Any particular Frys? Hopefully not.
Trip successful. Could only buy 1, but still a success. Before we hadn't seen it anywhere.
I’m booked at Yosemite, but that does not mean they are open. They expect to open mid-June with about 50% normal capacity. Our Lodge is also closed right now, but expects to open soon. They are basically fully booked. They expect to do a lot of outdoor dining, and room (cabin) service which they have never done before. You have to wear a space helmet in the hot tub. (;-)
I too had a haircut, lost 4 lbs!
Smiling Sams, you might try Sprouts. We bought some at ours a few days ago. 8oz bottles only at the register so they could control the number. Also Trader Joes had small spray bottles.
Had my hair cut last week by Mr Sails using a gadget bought from amazon. Kind of a weird comb with spacers. Did a pretty good job. Might be a permanent change.
I bought one of These contraptions just before all the lock downs started. I will probably not go back to a barber shop in the foreseeable future. The only thing is that I will now have a permanent bad haircut. Good thing my Tauck trips are all cancelled.
I stumbled upon hand sanitizer last week, similarly bottle, cost a dollar more than you paid.
Haircuts, what’s a haircut? No where near that point here! Thank yourselves lucky? Don’t forget, when people start traveling from state to state, that’s a worry.
Sam - I made the same comment to the barber when I went in about 10 days ago (day 2 of our reopening). I said this was the longest my hair has been since college.
I have a Target a few blocks away and picked up hand sanitizer there. Seems you have to catch it the day it arrives and is stocked on the shelves. Also finally found some disinfecting wipes (Target's store brand equiv. of Clorox wipes) a few weeks ago. I think manufacture of hand sanitizer has been ramped up major league, as I read an article about Vegas reopening and they said they have hand sanitizer stations every 10-20 ft and didn't say anything about difficulty getting them filled.
My local Sprouts has been the worst place to find just about everything for the last 2 months. They don't even have bananas any longer!
A light in the tunnel. Yosemite is opening June 12th. We have reservations for the Evergreen Lodge for the week of July 13th. They have ‘spread things out’, but almost everything will be open ... pools, hot tubs, recreation areas. The place is a natural for distancing anyway ... cabins and tents. They are cutting back on the day passes to Yosemite to about 50% of normal. The Lodge we stay in was actually the camp where the workers stayed when they built the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which provides all the water to San Francisco ... and powers the street cars.
Just got a message from my TA. A number of cruise lines plan to start up in October, and some trips are posted for September. Notable trips involved Vietnam, Antarctica, and the Caribbean which is opening up slowly as we speak. There are also some Galapagos trips posted.
I got a cold call today from Norwegian Cruise Lines asking if I'm ready to book a cruise. I said no and please don't call back.
NCL is pretty far removed from Tauck. Silversea, and Windstar had several offers. Nice boats.
Caribbean.....it’s the start of the hurricane season there. Galapagos.....doesn’t Ecuador still have high numbers of Covid cases. Vietnam has done well. The TD on our aborted tour lives in Vietnam but does not have citizenship. He just emailed us, the earliest he thinks he will be allowed back in is August, it’s so sad, his partner is there.
There are parts of the Caribbean that see very few hurricanes ... some not in 50 years. But the cruises will not start until late October or November. Here is the current situation:
Aruba's border and airport is scheduled to open between June 15th and July 1st.
Antigua and Barbuda have welcomed their first commercial flights already.
The Bahamas are hoping to welcome tourists as of July 1st.
Cuba is planning to welcome Canadians in July through Sunwing vacations and in September through Air Canada vacation packages.
Dominican Republic is welcoming tourists as of July 4th, however restaurants and bars will only offer takeout and delivery.
Jamaica is open as of June 15th with a nightly curfew in place.
St. Lucia has now opened 1500 hotel rooms and is doing a phased-in approach.
St. Martin and Saint Maarten are in Phase 3 of their opening and their restaurants and businesses are open.
Turks & Caicos is planning to open their airport on July 22nd but their cruise ship terminal will remain closed until August 31st.
The US Virgin Islands are open now but a state of emergency will remain in place until July 17th.
Back in the optimist corner. Our favorite lodge at Yosemite (the Evergreen with tents and cabins) opened on Friday. They were allowed to open everything except the hot tub ... so they heated the pool to 95 degrees. They were fully booked, and running at full tilt. The week in July that we will be there is the week that many of the firefighters who saved the lodge during the “Rim Fire” (2013) will be staying there. They come back every year. They were living there during the Rim Fire, so they had a little extra motivation. The fire went right up to the edge of the swimming pool. It should be fun to be there with those folks ... but they got our favorite cabin in the Muir section.