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Thoughts on traveling in pandemic times

Some last thoughts about traveling, especially during pandemic times.

First off: we went WAY too fast. Honestly, if I were to recommend this to anyone, plan on five years on the road and GO SLOW!  Go to an area, spend a few weeks to a month there, explore around you, then move on. 

I did like that we tried to see as many national park sites as possible. We learned SO much and found hidden gems that we wouldn't have, if we had just been hitting the "big ones". 

It is so hard to understand how far apart things are or how big a state is when you are zig zagging your way across the U.S. It really made everything seem very far apart, geographically, because we were stopping and starting and driving all the backroads.

There were places we didn't visit again, since we had done been there somewhat recently between 2016-2018, before we hit the road.  Some of those places included Disneyland/L.A. and Washington D.C., especially all the Smithsonian museums.

There were plenty of places that we just threw off our list--mostly historical building tours. How many historical buildings can you see before it's all a blur or boring? See: GO SLOW! above.  When you move as fast as we did, it is helpful for connecting dots between historical places. It's also a detriment in terms of "seen this already" when it's another historical building. 

As for traveling during a pandemic:

There was a lot of construction going on everywhere we went. It seemed that most places, being totally shut down at first, decided that this was the time to start renovations or upgrades which were still going on as they opened up to the public again. Construction limited what we could see and do.

Many buildings were closed (mostly older historical buildings) due to lack of pandemic precautions, namely the ability to be socially distanced or good ventilation in those buildings. 

Often the visitor centers or museums were closed for the same reasons, we were also not able to see the films at many national park sites because the movie theatres were not well ventilated/did not have well spaced seating. 

In many ways, it was nice that we were limited on what we could do and see at many sites, because we were experiencing travel fatigue. We wanted to go and do and see, but we were also exhausted. It was oddly also exhausting to NOT be able to see things.  We would go to a site, realize we couldn't tour the building or truly engage with the site, it got to the point where it felt like why bother?

All in all, we are glad we were able to visit all 48 contiguous states. We learned a lot, saw so many intriguing places, there is so much beauty and diversity in this country. Next time (ha!) we will go a whole lot slower and really enjoy the travel as much as the sightseeing!

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