December 29, 2020

Hoping for a Better Year in 2021

By roads-rus

I am beginning to think that travel might be possible again in 2021. Ruth and I will soon be on the list of those to get the COVID vaccine. Assuming that the new strain of the virus will not affect the effectiveness of available vaccines, we hope that countries will begin to open to travelers at least by mid-year. After getting the 2nd shot, we hope to be good to go abroad and domestically. This, of course, will depend on what airlines do to protect their passengers.

We have not seen our relatives in St Louis since it became difficult to travel in the 3rd month of 2020. This past week we have booked a flight to the Midwest next August, and are hoping to see my sisters and Ruth’s cousins for a reunion in Missouri. My grandson gave Ruth and me a redeemable Airbnb gift card for Christmas. In the meantime when travel is not possible yet, I am developing a list of destinations we plan to visit between now and then. My list is heavy on repeats, like Newfoundland.

The places we will return to first include 3 foreign destinations and 3 domestic. The foreigns include 2 regions in Canada, one in Ireland, and several in Australia. I have been keeping in shape on the Peloton exercise bike and have been amazed by the scenic rides in Mt. Revelstoke National Park, which we have been to, and Yoho and the Canadian Glacier National Parks, which we have not visited. Both are on my list along with the glorious mountains and attractions in the Okanagan region that we have not seen since moving to the Northwest earlier in this century. We have longed to return to the Galway area of Ireland where I started to blog, and we have not been to Australia since 2018. Going to Sydney via a scenic ride just doesn’t satisfy me, and I hope to return to Bendigo and experience Tamworth for the 1st time while Down Under again. In the United States, we hope to visit our son and his family in their new home in the Denver area and travel south to Colorado Springs, a city that we brushed past last year but have not really explored in many years. We also hope to take the nostalgic trip along the California coast that we planned to do in 2020 but could not realize because of restrictions and closures. On our way to Newfoundland, we hope to see the sights in the other Portland, the one in Maine, that we have not been to in many years.

This all may be premature. Who would have thought this time last year that we’d all be experiencing the most fearsome pandemic in our history during 2020? But we have and those months are lost forever. Here’s to a better year in 2021!

Hank

About roads-rus

Since the beginning, I've had to avoid writing about the downside of travel in order to sell more than 100 articles. Just because something negative happened doesn't mean your trip was ruined. But tell that to publishers who are into 5-star cruise and tropical beach fantasies. I want to tell what happened on my way to the beach, and it may not have been all that pleasant. My number one rule of the road is...today's disaster is tomorrow's great story. My travel experiences have appeared in about twenty magazines and newspapers. I've been in all 50 states more than once and more than 50 countries. Ruth and I love to travel internationally--Japan, Canada, China, Argentina, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, etc. Within the next 2 years we will have visited all of the European countries. But our favorite destination is Australia. Ruth and I have been there 9 times. I've written a book about Australia's Outback, ALONE NEAR ALICE, which is available through both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My first fictional work, MOVING FORWARD, GETTING NOWHERE, has recently been posted on Amazon. It's a contemporary, hopefully funny re-telling of The Odyssey. View all posts by roads-rus
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2020 at 9:43 pm and posted in troubled times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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