Since we got back on the road, we’ve been just ahead of shutdowns and outbreaks. (From another perspective, it looks like we’ve been leaving a trail of Covid in our wake. But that’s correlation – not causation. To the best of our knowledge we have not spread any Coronavirus.)
The Very Beginning – March 2020
We departed New York only a week or two before the novel coronavirus would fully emerge. We had been residing in Fairfield County, Connecticut – next door to the county which a mere week after leaving would be the origin point of one of the first known big outbreaks. And being close to NYC, our home base encountered COVID-19 head-on, early on in the pandemic.
We knew to take it seriously, but not before we departed the northeast and headed west.
First stop, Portland
We arrived in Portland to an Airbnb expecting to spend a long weekend with friends and see live music (our favorite band, TOOL), the first week in March 2020. Instead, we got sick, and our friends’ flights were canceled. Coronavirus was upon us, despite “guidance” from “leadership” to the contrary.
We heard about the nursing home in Seattle, the cruise ships, the San Francisco Bay Area being the first to shut down, the emerging cases in Oregon, and so on as the news developed. We then thought: “yeah… let’s get away from the West Coast and any hot spots.”
Onward and inland
We had to decide where to go for quarantine, where we could “hunker down and ride out this pandemic virus.”
But first, we had to find somewhere to spend the workweek. We settled quickly on Ashland, Oregon – at least temporarily – because it got us moving in the direction we wanted to go (which was South), and it was a city that we felt we knew well enough, politically and logistically, from past visits, and therefore knew it would be conducive to van life.
But beyond that, where would we go to ride out this virus for the next month (!) or more? Sedona! It was decided.
Sedona, Arizona - Spring 2020
We surfed Sedona’s energy vortices for ten blessed weeks. We emerged with the resolve and knowledge that – by way of a vow, with care and consideration – we could get through this.
Together.
We got to go to the Grand Canyon, on its reopening for Memorial Day weekend, May 23-24, 2020 – on what must have been one of the most sparsely-attended days since the invention of the Interstate Highway System.
Things were opening up a bit, and we felt it was time to move on. We left Arizona at the end of May 2020.
state Transition
We wanted to go back to Yellowstone, so we headed for Utah and stayed in Park City for a workweek before landing in Montana. We spent a few weeks mostly boondocking and camping in Forest Service campgrounds in Gardener and Bozeman. This gave us time to explore more of Yellowstone National Park. There were very few if any cases, and they had just reopened to travelers from other states without requiring a quarantine. We were still careful, as always.
But like in Sedona, we were the weirdos with masks. Some people apparently didn’t “believe in” masks. (Note to those people: it’s not about belief; it’s science. Germs are real. Masks work. This is not debatable. Germ theory is real. Germ theory is a theory like gravity is a theory.)
We spent a month in Montana and then we left, by way of Wyoming.
Cody, Wyoming
On the way out of Yellowstone, we had brunch with a family friend, Joe’s Godfather Frank, and as it happened, we were exposed to one of only three known COVID-19 infections in Cody, Wyoming at that time. Frank ended up spending a fair amount of time in a hospital in the closest city, and thankfully he recovered. We only learned that we had been exposed a week later, shortly after arriving in Boulder – too late to avoid potentially exposing our friends here. Thankfully, we tested negative (in the logical sense) – and felt pretty positive about it.
Boulder, Colorado – Summer & Fall 2020
Boulder has been a great home base for us – thanks in part to our very affordable, well-placed, short-term apartment, as well as to our friends here, and the culture too.
In Boulder, everyone wears masks – allowing everyday life to remain fairly constant …so far.
People walk, run, bike, skateboard, one-wheel, scooter, glide, ride, and drive to get where they are going just like anywhere. And often doing all of the above in masks (due to the pandemic).
We left Boulder for about five weeks at the end of Summer 2020. I noticed that on the day we left Boulder the first leaves were falling.
On our late summer van trip, we saw some amazing things – like North Cascades National Park in Washington – and did some awesome hiking in Wyoming. Unfortunately, we got smoked out of our original plan to spend a couple weeks on the Olympic Peninsula due to heavy wildfires.
We realized that it was hard to go back to living in the van. Work-wise, it felt like having one hand tied behind my back. It didn’t help that only a week into our trip, quality of life was halved after our bed broke (our convertible bed-sofa became a permanent sofa). We paused van life (#brokenbedvanlife #nofun) with several multi-day stays in Airbnbs because we learned that a permanent desk is irreplaceable and a decent bed is essential.
We limped home to Boulder to rendezvous with Amy (who had been living in our apartment in Boulder for several weeks) and Will (who had arrived a week earlier). Such a privilege to see family and friends and especially to travel together, in these pandemic times. We celebrated Ashleigh & Amy’s birthday in Rocky Mountain National Park.
November 2020 Update
For now, we have decided to remain in Boulder through Summer 2021, aside from a few months this winter when we’re planning to be back in the Northeast. We feel set up to ride out the ongoing pandemic amid the increasing concern that’s likely not letting up until the spring.