Installment #14 in Monolisticle's Ongoing Campaign Against the "Internet of Endless Listicles."
Ever since Jacquin Phoenix’s private jet-shaming Oscar acceptance speech, traveling via private jet doesn’t carry quite the same glamour it once did (okay, who am I kidding, it’s awesome). But still—the environment. Not to mention the expense. And did I mention the environment?
Plus there are quite a few charities that could use $20,000 (the average cost of a luxury jet 3-hour round trip flight for 6 passengers and luggage).
Welcome to the return of the Great American Family Car Road Trip.
I’d love to see Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and the fam rolling across the amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties in their G-Wagon or Bentley Bentayga (or whatever kind of luxury SUV they haul their kids around in) to visit one of our spectacular national parks, and camping (I mean glamping) along the way. Before you dismiss that as silliness, glamping isn’t reserved for fly-fishing expeditions in Wyoming or wildebeest-viewing safaris in Africa. You can still travel and camp/glamp in style all across ‘Merica.
Recently my family and I took our own mid-pandemic road trip across the country to Outer Banks, North Carolina. We’ve been going there since I was a kid growing up in Virginia. What traveling by car lacks in speed and convenience, it more than makes up for in peace of mind, reduced stress, and the general annoyance that comes from interacting with crowds of people in tight places who don’t share one’s own respect for scientifically-validated CDC guidelines (you know, the kind of people who don’t wear masks, or if they do, take it off to sneeze, and then put it back on again. That kind of thing). I’d rather suffer an 8-hour drive in the blissfully sterile comfort of my own vehicle and tent.
To prepare for the trip, we planned out our meals and packed everything into a cooler so we wouldn’t have to eat at fast food places. As an added benefit, the time we saved not stopping for food freed us up for scenic stops and attractions along the way.
Initially, we made a reservation at a campground halfway to our destination. That way, our only forced interactions with others would be public bathrooms along the way and at the campground, which we were hoping to minimize. And skipping showers for one day was not a huge hardship.
However, a few days out from our trip, fate intervened in the form of an inclement weather forecast, so we had to call a road-trip audible. We hadn’t wanted to stay in a hotel, but we had no choice. If our tent got wet, it would be a beast to dry it off and pack into our car for the final 10-hour leg of the trip. My wife, being the producer genius she is, searched the Googler for small towns in Ohio (halfway point) with the lowest incidents of Covid-19. We then booked a hotel accordingly. She also took screen grabs of the route maps in case we lost phone service during the drive. It happened. Twice.
So how did we further minimize our risk in the hotel?
We paid on the way by phone, so we wouldn’t have to linger at checkin aside from picking up room keys. We took the stairs up one floor instead of using the elevator. Wiped everything down in the room. Pulled the covers off the bed. And then laid our sleeping bags over the “clean” sheets underneath. And we brought our own pillows and blankets. Not ideal, but certainly not the pain we thought it would be. Plus: air conditioning.
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The most difficult part of the trip was passing within 20 miles of Lexington, North Carolina and not being able to stop for the world’s greatest pork barbeque. But I knew I had amazing seafood waiting for me at the beach, which more than made up for it: boiled shrimp, steamed crabs, grilled oysters, pan-fried grouper and red snapper, a seafood boil, and a gumbo.
No need to eat out. Even pre-pandemic, we would buy our own fresh seafood at the beach and make it ourselves. My brothers and I—who are all good cooks thanks to my parents and many generations of family recipes—take turns making meals and trying to outdo each other. And my sister-in-law steams crabs better than anyone. We were lucky to score a bushel from a local market. You place an order early in the week and hope they come through. They did.
So while the pandemic may have put a few kinks in our travel plans, we still found a way to get to our destination with minimal disruption. Yes, the trip was much longer than it would have been by plane, but it was certainly much more memorable by car. And without the constant reminders that we were in the middle of a pandemic.
By car we got to see the country—and each other—in ways you simply can't by plane. We could stop. Take pictures. Take scenic detours. And actually be part of the country we were passing through rather than merely glimpse it from 30,000 feet above.
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