One of the trips that we booked WAY back when (at least the end of last year) was a cruise to the Caribbean. We love cruises for what they are, how easy they are, and were really looking forward to enjoying some relaxing time on the water.

But here is the issue with great deals and Thanksgiving travel. Sure, they sometimes go hand in hand but othertimes, well… just yikes! We got a great deal on the cruise – $500 per adult for a 7 day cruise in a stateroom with a balcony. Kids were free. AH-MAZ-ING. But then we go to book the airfare to Florida. $650 per person for the times that we need. We even toyed with the idea of not going nonstop (yes, I know. It’s a bit bougie to only want nonstop but it is just so much easier!) but even those tickets were over $600 per person. Yikes!

Then, there is COVID. We were so optimistic that by Thanksgiving of 2021, everything would be back to normal. We even had hopes that our kids would be vaccinated by then, based on some information we received from our pediatrician. But this is an ever changing situation (which, you would have thought that I would have learned by now) and with the new CDC news that looks like the vaccine won’t be available for kids until midwinter, it just all seems too much.

So we made the decision to cancel. Luckily, we have free cancellation until August 1st. One of the rules we set for ourselves for any travel booked until the whole WORLD got the all clear was that it had to be refundable or without change fees. In this case, that was one of the smarter things we have done.

Now we look to planning our alternate trip. We already have the time off and we certainly don’t want to let good vacation days go to waste. We have done several road trips in the US this year and have had such a great time. We have also discovered a new love for National Parks. I recently learned about the White Sands National Park and I am obsessed with seeing it. So in the end, we might be spending Thanksgiving in New Mexico!

We are back in action! With proper precautions, of course.

This year has certainly been interesting and it has been a little challenging for travelers like us. In the end, we ended up cancelling 4 trips over the first few months of quarantine, and then a couple more that we booked in that brief period when things were looking better. But we did manage to find a new travel stride and, in the end, we had so much fun family time!

Our children’s school announced early on that the would start remote. My job is already remote-based and while I travel a lot in the fall in a normal year, that just wasn’t the case in 2020. My husband has a CEO who hates germs just slightly more than he hates remote work, so that meant that my husband too was home for the long haul. Armed with this knowledge, we quickly realized that we had nothing keeping us, at least for temporary periods, in our hometown. So we did what we do best – we planned another trip.

We opted for the beach – 5 weeks on a beach in South Carolina, spending our weekdays working or in school, and our weekends exploring the area (and eating amazing seafood!). It was such a welcome change of pace from the monotony that life has become during the beginning of the pandemic. We had such a great time, that we came home for two weeks and did it again, this time heading to New Orleans for three weeks. I love New Orleans but three weeks is plenty of time to explore the city.

I recognize that we are incredibly lucky in so many ways. We were happy to find a way to try new things, even if we were limited in many ways.

Now that things are returning to normal (fingers crossed!), we are back in full planning mode. Stayed tuned for our next adventure!