In contrast to prior years which tend to go by with increasing speed as we get older, 2020 appears somehow frozen in time with challenges and plot twists that would have seemed borrowed from some dystopian work of fiction, had they not happened in real life.
We are deeply grateful for all we have been able to share this year and our hearts go out to the many people in our circle whose lives have been struck by personal and financial losses in the midst of what has been, by all accounts, a very trying and transformative time.
Most people can name where they were the moment they realized that COVID wasn’t going to be just another flu. For us the news came on Sunday, March 8 as we were pulling into Palm Springs with our faithful little ’68 Airstream Safari in tow. We were on our annual pilgrimage to the BNP Paribas Masters tennis tournament. On that day, the evening before qualifiers were scheduled to begin, 500 players, hundreds of staff and volunteers, along with 500,000 fans were notified that the entire event was being canceled.
Over the next few days, we also learned that Sibri wasn’t going back to school as usual, Mari wasn’t going back to her office anytime soon, and real estate showings were being put on hold until further notice. This meant that virtually overnight all of our work and school obligations had been converted to a combination of calls, emails, WebEx or Zoom meetings, and we were faced with the prospect of sheltering in place when we got back to Santa Cruz.
We pivoted and decided to stay on the road that weekend until things got a little more back to normal. With things starting to shut down in Palm Springs and at home, we started to explore alternative remote destinations. After all, we had everything we needed already packed onto our 6 wheels.
We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were kicking off what would eventually become a kind of bucket list tour of places we wouldn’t have otherwise taken the time to visit, living together as family in a 22' vintage Aluminum trailer that we had bought years ago on an impulse.
We first headed to Joshua Tree then Kings Canyon, took a brief stop in Barstow to visit our friend Deborah’s mother, and continued on to Yosemite. With ample cancellations, sites were readily available at each campground we visited, and very few other visitors at the parks, it felt like we had stepped back in time, getting to experience the natural beauty around us in a way that felt like a dreamlike state, except that in this dream we also had to work full-time in between our explorations.
A couple of weeks into this newfound reality the National Parks closed down to all visitors, bringing our journey to a halt for the time being. We pivoted again, calling our friends Larry and Grazyna who own Mercey Hot Springs in the central valley and ended up sheltering in place with them for 8 weeks, over Easter, while they were shut down due to COVID.
They were taking advantage of the closure to do some repairs to the resort in the wake of a recent fire, and we were able to help out around the property with various odd jobs in between our daily routines of distance learning and remote workloads which we were able to maintain thanks to them sharing their private network with us.
We touched down back in Santa Cruz in the middle of May to address some work projects that needed our personal attention and to catch up with friends and family.
It felt good to be back, but we also found ourselves feeling confined in the house under the county’s heightened lockdown rules, so with the State and National parks starting to slowly open back up, and air travel still not considered safe, we decided to take a road trip back to the Midwest, packing the Airstream up with everything needed for our trip, including our beloved Bella the cat, and making our way across the country to our eventual destination in Jerome Michigan to celebrate 4th of July with Mari’s dad at his home on Mirror Lake.
We quickly found that we could handle our daily work and school responsibilities as long as we had two bars of service and LTE, and this became the standard prerequisite when selecting our next destination. With Mari doing the research using multiple online resources we were able to book campsites in locations where we could enjoy new scenery while staying accessible to those who needed us.
By the end of our adventure, we would travel over 8,000 miles, across 19 states. And along the way, we would get to see many of the nation’s landmarks and visit various members of our family and friends, all the while doing our best to stay safe at every step.
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