Don’t let up

In Dec of 2020 we drove across the US to get to Kate’s father during the holidays. Her mother passed earlier in the year and this would be her dad’s first holidays without her for over 50 years. Driving across the country in the winter can be a bad idea as the weather tends toward snow and ice.

Our original plan had been to leave Saturday morning and get to Virginia in a few days. There were a few catches though: 1) The pandemic was going strong and there were no vaccines yet and 2) A storm was coming and was due to hit Friday night.

So we took off right after work on Friday in the hopes we would get out in front of the storm. That plan worked and the driving conditions were dry and clear. As we progressed into Texas we saw that the COVID overlay map on Google Maps was showing very high levels of infection.

One of the main reasons we have been so adamant about following masking and social distancing guidelines is that we don’t want to kill our parents. With that in mind we had already done a 2 week self isolation before we left Colorado so that we would not put Kate’s dad in jeopardy.

Now we were driving through another type of storm and our immediate though was, don’t let up. So we kept on driving for about 5 to 7 hours each, then we would switch seats and try to get a nap in.

We made it across the country only stopping for gas and food and avoided getting sick. It was a crazy thing to do and I do not recommend ever doing it, but tough times call for tough actions. We ended up having a very pleasant holiday with Kate’s dad and on the way back to Colorado we did stop one night in Arkansas and another in Albuquerque.