Road Trips in the time of COVID

Pat and I just got back from our 2021 road trip, where I started out on July 28, and he joined me in Missoula, MT. 

It was a bit less stressful than last year, and I can't help but think that a lot of the reason was because we decided to tent camp as much as possible, unlike last year, where we spent probably too many nights at hotels. 

To me, the tent camping took a few elements of the COVID transmission off the table; we weren't at the mercy of others for cleaning our sleeping quarters, and even encountering others, we were in the open air. 

A typical camp site with the Crosstrek and our tents. 

We usually drove 2-3 hours between places we stopped to visit, and so there was plenty of time to talk about things, such as "should we have bought Mom's RV?" or "maybe we should stay at a hotel?" In the end, for the two of us, tent camping made much more financial sense. 

Having done three years of road trips with my mom and her Pleasure-Way RV, I have some experience on that front, and the multiple trips to and from Packwood for the ProSolos there had me very acquainted with staying at hotels on the road. 

Here's a breakdown for 2021 :

• Tent sites at KOA campgrounds cost $30-50. A site with water and/or electric will cost more, so if you have charger banks for electronics, use them and charge them in the car during the driving to avoid needing an outlet. A $33 KOA Rewards membership gets you 10% off, and then you accrue "points" that can get you more money off a night. I recouped the $33 membership cost with the savings in the first week of the trip, and accrued enough points to get $20 off a stay by the end of the trip. 
• Hotel costs on the trip in 2021 were ridiculous. I got a hotel in Missoula because Pat's flight came in at 11PM, and I made that reservation two months prior to the trip. It was still $140 ($126+tax), and then the room didn't even include a fridge! (the front desk clerk said, "Oh, most of our rooms have them; I guess you got one without."). When we looked at hotels for the next night in the Bozeman/Livingston/Butte area, they started at $225+tax. Needless to say, we went with the Three Forks KOA, which was one of the best decisions of the trip. Definitely go to the Iron Horse Cafe for pie if you go through Three Forks.
• For tent camping, make sure you have a vehicle that you can "hide out" in if necessary. The first three nights of the trip, I dealt with nasty thunderstorms, so after I set up the tent (which is waterproof), I "hid" in the Crosstrek until the worst of it had passed.  

The gluten-free Key Lime pie from Iron Horse was incredibly decadent. Pat couldn't eat all of it as dessert, and finished it for breakfast the next morning. 

• Gas is a big cost, and probably the biggest cost difference between a tent camping road trip and an RV road trip. While both the Crosstrek and the Pleasure-Way RV take "regular" unleaded gas, the Crosstrek averages ~36 MPG (35.2MPG last year and 36.5MPG this year, both years ~7500 miles traveled, including both Rocky and Appalachian mountain crossings). The Pleasure-Way, a modified E350 chassis and engine, was 14-15MPG. At an average of $3/gal for regular gas (I did splurge one day and gave the Crosstrek mid-grade, because I wanted to reward it for its hard work in the desert heat), that adds up, fast. 
• 7500 miles at 36MPG is about 208 gallons of gas. At $3/gal, that's $624 in gas alone (and I'm being nice with my averages; it was probably more than $3/gal). 
• 7500 miles at 15MPG is about 500 gallons of gas. At the same $3/gal, that's $1500 in gas. A larger RV (my mom's Pleasure-Way was a class C and only fit two people) is probably not going to do as well mileage-wise. And a diesel motor might not help, as diesel costs were close to $4/gal, even if the MPG might be better. 
• I went through a lot of ice in the coolers, which an RV doesn't need to worry about. I wasn't using top-of-the-line plastiformed coolers, but they are lightweight, don't take up huge space and do what I need them to do. Still, I was buying 20lb of ice each day, at about $6 per day for ice. For a 19 day trip, that comes out to about $115 in ice. 
• RVs allow for a huge discount on food, since you don't have to eat out when you have a kitchen and a fridge with you. Tent camping means bringing things in coolers and/or using MREs or other freeze-dried options. I have a great campstove for cooking on, though I have to admit, cooking on it when there is an impending thunderstorm is a little daunting. 

Heating up some water to rehydrate a freeze-dried meal for dinner in Rawlins, WY

Walleye cooked on the campstove grill. We caught the fish at Rainy Lake.

Brats (glorified hotdogs?) on the campstove. We have the grill attachment for our Biolite, which is great.

• Breakfast was usually a mini-bagel with cheese, and lunch was a piece of fruit, granola bar and a sandwich. You just have to make sure the cheese and any deli meat doesn't get wet in the cooler. Fruit was bananas, plums, nectarines, etc. This meal plan was true for the RV trips with mom, too. 
• If you opt to "eat out," plan on paying upwards of $15-20/person (gratuity included, more if you get beer/wine). That's a far cry from buying a $5/pk of five brats, and a $3 loaf of bread, or even a $9 "southwest skillet" rehydrated meal (which was actually really good). 
• Just looking at food, gas and lodging costs, a pure tent camping experience could be had for less than $2000 over 19 days/7500 miles, not counting any admission fees for parks. Mixing in a hotel night or a meal out here and there will increase that cost. Since we were fishing on Rainy Lake with a guide service as part of our trip, I'd opted to get rooms at a lodge on the lake as a bit of a splurge, but I have to admit, that walleye taco wrap at the Thunderbird Lodge is amazing. 
• An RV trip over the same amount of time/miles will be about a thousand more in gas, a hundred less in ice, and about $500 more in lodging costs (depending on the size of the RV, and whether you need water/electric/dump hookups). So, estimate for 19 days to be still less than $3500.
• A roadtrip that relies on eating out and hotels every night is going to cost at least $4200 for two people and a vehicle that can get upwards of 35MPG (regular grade gasoline). 

Some other ideas to reduce the costs :

• Get a National Parks Pass if you plan to visit multiple parks that have entrance fees. For $80, you have unlimited entrance to all NPS and associated (BLM, National Wildlife Refuge, etc.) sites for a year. 
• There are ways to get a free NPS pass, but you need to qualify. Students in the fourth grade qualify, as do military/veterans. If you're over 62, you can get a lifetime pass for $80, versus paying $80 annually. Certain disabilities also qualify for a free NPS pass. If you volunteer in a park and accrue more than 250 hours, you can also qualify for a free NPS pass. 
• Plan to visit smaller, less crowded sites and "bundle them." For instance, I visited Rock Creek Station and Fort Kearny on the same Nebraska State Parks day pass, since the pass I bought at Rock Creek didn't expire until noon the next day. 

The legend of Wild Bill Hickok was born at the Rock Creek Stage Station

• If you don't need water and electric hookups, and are willing to do the leave-no-trace principles of backcountry camping, then dispersed camping in National Forests and BLM sites is definitely an option. 
• Sign up for cash back apps like Get Upside for discounts on gasoline purchases (note that the link here is my referral link). Note that if you use an app like this, look carefully to see what you are paying; sometimes, only the most expensive stations are participating, and so you actually aren't saving money there after all. 
• Use a cash back app like iBotta for hotel reservations. iBotta will get you 3% cash back at Choice Hotels (Comfort Inn, Sleep Inn, Quality Inn, etc.), if you make the reservation through the iBotta extension on Chrome. Unlike something like Priceline, you can actually choose the hotel you want to stay at.
• iBotta will get you a discount on a ton of other things, too, so it's useful for more than just road trips. The link above is my referral link, but I wouldn't refer this (or the Get Upside app) if I didn't think they were worth the time/effort.

Above all, on a road trip, be flexible. Weather and other unforeseen circumstances may cause you to change your itinerary. Look at those billboards and if something seems interesting, do it. Wall Drug isn't for everyone (I've never been there), but others find it fascinating. On the flip side, in 2012, I saw a billboard for House on the Rock, and thought, "Wait, isn't that where Shadow and Wednesday went in American Gods?" and so decided to take a detour. 

"Take Highway Fourteen west to Spring Green. We'll be meeting everyone at a place called the House on the Rock. You been there?"

-- Wednesday to Shadow, American Gods

No matter what, enjoy your trip! 

Camping in Rawlins, WY during a thunderstorm

Hi There

 It's June 6, a real day that will always "live in infamy" due to the storming of the beaches at Normandy. 

I'm just feeling morose this evening. It's another day feeling lost. It's another weekend I didn't get to do anything that made me feel worthwhile, it's another day missing my dad, it's another day hating my job. 

The cicadas are funny, until they aren't. I discovered cicada-scar all along the small maple that I planted last year, the one that had been thriving since I planted it. Now I'm scared it will die due to all the cicadas trying to lay their eggs. 

I've been applying to so many jobs lately, and while I had a few interviews early on, most recently, I get nothing. I just get the auto-rejected email. I know from being on the other side of things that a lot of times, these positions are only posted because they have to be posted, and I hate that. I apply to the a job knowing that the administration at that school already knows who will get the position, and I go through the motions in an interview, and it sucks the life out of me with every rejection. 

Meanwhile, just walking the hallways at the school where I am sucks the life out of me. I see the plaques designating classrooms as "engineering" or "biomedical science" or whatever, and it just reinforces that I won't ever teach any of those classes, even though I was led to believe that would happen. I applied for and accepted a position to teach AP Biology and honors biology, but just weeks after my acceptance, I was told that the person who'd applied for the job that I didn't apply for, she had AP Biology experience. So they were going to have her teach the AP Biology classes, and give me the honors chemistry classes that I didn't want. 

The chemistry classes that I was trying to get away from. 

The carrot that was dangled in front of me when I was told the news was that "next year" I would be able to teach something that I had experience in. Something that fit my skill set of anatomy and forensics and genetics and anything else besides chemistry. 

The cake was a lie.

The Return of Hockey

The NHL started it's COVID-shortened 2021 season last night, and tonight marks the return of Caps hockey!

It still doesn't seem real.

Another Day That Will Live in Infamy

Today started off a good day. I got out of bed. I had breakfast. I logged into my work account and graded some papers, responded to some emails, filled out some paperwork. 

I helped a student understand valence electrons and ion formation a little better, and conferred with my paraeducators about how to better support some students. 

I graded some more papers, worked on some lesson plans. 

Then, for some reason, I decided to search out how the elections in Georgia had gone. When I went to sleep last night, pundits were calling both races for the Democrats Ossof and Warnock, but I wanted to see what the vote tallies were looking like. 

What I saw across the Internet was terrifying. 

People who were protesting the election had become -- no, revealed themselves to be -- terroristic fascists, pushing past Capitol Police and forcing their way into the Capitol building while the senators were running their mouths instead of just certifying the election. Congress had to be disbanded, the electoral votes had to be protected, and everything went into a lockdown. 

All because the man-child in the White House can't accept that he lost the election, and his man-baby supporters have fallen under his cult-spell and can't think for themselves. 

The images from today will be forever seared in the minds of the American public... or they should be. There are still a lot of seditionists out there -- as evidenced by attacks on state capitol buildings in Kansas, Michigan, Oregon and other states. It's time to stop accepting sedition as expression of free speech and start prosecuting it as treason and hate crimes. 

Some images. 

Portland 2020 D.C. 2021 pic.twitter.com/10rAjb2mia

— Megan Reyes (@megreyes_) January 6, 2021

Cops are taking selfies with the terrorists. pic.twitter.com/EjkQ83h1p2

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) January 6, 2021

Mitt Romney yelled “This is what you’ve gotten” to Ted Cruz and his fellow Senate colleagues as protesters swarmed the building. https://t.co/Yt8ZPArYpE

— David Freedlander (@freedlander) January 6, 2021

That’s the confederate flag flying outside the Senate chamber pic.twitter.com/1XB5TlAsuv

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 6, 2021

The same House chamber doors where the armed standoff took place hours ago is being cleaned for members to return for the joint session: pic.twitter.com/JlZgzwci8n

— Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela) January 7, 2021

There are some stark differences here between what we saw during the summer and the Black Lives Matter protests after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and what happened today, and everyone sees it, at least anyone who isn't a racist. 

The Day of Reckoning has begin. Even the Vice President, Mike Pence, is trying to distance himself from the insanity, going as far as to change the cover photo on his Twitter profile to a picture of Biden and Harris from their victory speech in November 20202. 

After doomscrolling for a good two hours, which made me feel more and more sick to the stomach as I watch the terrorist attack unfold in real time, I had to step away from the computer for a few hours. It's still terrifying, and this image is going to haunt me for a long time. 

Day 1 vs. Day 1,448 pic.twitter.com/OohffkCQrc

— 11th Hour (@11thHour) January 6, 2021

There are Senators back on the floor of the Capitol, running their mouths (and in some cases, trying to covering their asses) about unity and democracy and all that. STFU, really. Get the vote done, then expel the assholes among you. 

We need to be done pulling punches. Fascists, racists, Nazis, anti-Semites, misogynists.... they all need to run and hide if they are unwilling to be rehabilitated. Every Single One Of Them needs to lose their jobs and fear never being hirable or desirable again. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. Shame them. Call them out. If they can't accept the world in 2021, they need to find themselves alone and crying, homeless in a cave with no friends and no money. 

This really needs to end. Now. 

Dateline : January 5, 2021

Georgia on my mind. 

The political insanity in this country has to end. 

Fraud Alerts Suck

Winter Break is over, and so I woke up with an alarm this morning. To be honest, I didn't sleep much at all anyway; I get super anxious on Sunday nights anyway, and knowing it was "back to work" today didn't help. 

Things went pretty well for class, though. The students were engaged, and even had a few who I hadn't seen for weeks (not counting the break) show up. I had some work to grade that was turned in over the break, and I did that during my planning period, and go around to doing attendance and course recommendations after that. 

That's about the time I received the text from my bank, asking about a "suspicious charge." I immediately responded that it was not a valid transaction, and I get an auto-responder telling me that I should call, which I did. 

These fraudulent charges seem to happen to me at least once a year, and every other time, I've received a call and/or text from my bank that I immediately respond to. The bank stops the transaction, cancels my card, and then I need to go around and reset all of my auto-payments. As I sit on hold for ten minutes waiting for "the next available representative," I assume that the conversation will go just as the previous ones had. 

But it doesn't.

I don't know if policies have changed or if it's because I had to wait so long to talk to a person, but the representative informs me that the bank can't do anything because the payment has been processed. So, I'm out nearly $300 at least until the payment posts, at which point I have to call them to initiate the fraud proceedings. Excuse me? 

So, now I need to start off the next few days checking online to see if the payment has posted, then once it does, call the bank and tell them (again?) that the charge is fraudulent, even though they tagged it as fraudulent from the start! Worse yet, it seems that I might not even get the money back this time, at least not until a "full investigation is done." 

In the meantime, I just get to hope that this doesn't cause an overdraft situation. 

Sigh. There is a special place in the afterlife for thieves. 

COVID Reading List

Since the pandemic hit the US and shut down school buildings, I've gone through phases where I read a lot. I've gone through phases where I haven't read enough. 

On March 29, former Washington Capital Brooks Laich posted this on Instagram :

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Brooks Laich (@brookslaich)

I decided to take the challenge.

I couldn't necessarily guarantee that I'd go to sleep by 9PM and not wake up until after 6AM; going to sleep that early is beyond my circadian rhythms, and I often wake up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. Last night, for instance, I woke up at 4:21AM, and flopped around for at least a half-hour before I could fall back asleep. 

The other two, though, yes, I would embrace. 

I had bought a small step machine off Amazon a few months prior, and I started using it in earnest. Then I joined Centr and started using their "Centr Unleashed" program. 

But I also started reading again, at least for a few months. Then, at some point, I fell off the wagon.... but I'm back on it again. 

Here are some of the books I've finished reading recently, if you're interested! 

• Recently finished : Moon of the Crusted Snow (a new take on an old story, an Indigenous story by an Indigenous author)
• Currently reading : Hex Life : Wicked New Tales of Witchery (short stories by a variety of women authors)
• Next Up : Unsanctioned Experiments (short stories by a friend of mine, Ben Credle)

Also finally finished in 2020 :

• A Guy Like Me (John Scott's story to the NHL, which had to be told after the All-Star Game fiasco)
• Confessions of a Teenage Zombie Queen (a short read, and exactly what the title implies)
• Trailer Park Fae (Lili Saintcrow always has interesting takes on urban fantasy)
• Roadside Magic (the followup to Trailer Park Fae)
• Dead Astronauts (not sure how to explain this trip by Jeff Vandermeer)
• North American X-15 Owner's Workshop Manual (Pat bought this for me for my birthday; I love it)

And this isn't counting the books that I constantly refer to for road trips! 

• Rand McNally National Park Atlas (I love my atlas, and I buy a new one every year!!)
• Atlas Obscura (Pat got this for me in 2019, and there are so many places I want to visit still!)
• 50 States, 5000 Ideas (Pat got this for me this year, and I already have ideas written down for #roadtrip2021)
• America's National Parks (an Eastern National book I picked up at Cuyahoga Valley during a #404family trip, still inspiring!

So, can you take up the challenge? Read at least one chapter of a book every day? 

Full disclosure -- if you do buy any of the books I've linked to here, I do receive a pittance of a referral fee from Amazon. 

COVID : New Year, Same Old?

Yay, it's 2021!

2020 ended with a whimper, as it should. The last two and a half months of the year were the absolute worst. 

At the end of October, Pat and I suffered through the 'rona, after an anti-mask co-worker of his shared the virus with the office. Actually, "anti-mask" doesn't cover it; the moron is anti-science in general. The guy believes the Earth is a cylinder, for instance. Pat, being the loving husband that he is, brought it home and shared it with me. I was livid, and actually still am, considering at one point, I was so dehydrated and weak, I spent over 36 hours in bed and honestly thought I was going to die there. I missed Hallowe'en, of all holidays, because of illness. And, I had to do the calls of shame to those we'd most recently been in close contact with. 

Antietam Aqueduct

We didn't feel comfortable doing traditional Thanksgiving or even Christmas holiday with my family. For Thanksgiving, we managed to snag a campsite at the Antietam Aqueduct and so went camping and had turkey legs on the grill. There were maybe two other campsites occupied, and unlike most of our previous dozen or so C&O Camping experiences, it was blessedly quiet and peaceful. 

It was too cold to do the same on December 24, but we did do a quick gift exchange at my brother's and my mom's. 

New Year's Eve was probably the most sedate one for us in many years. A year that was terrible in so many ways for so many people really went out with a whimper. The neighbors only set off one or two fireworks. 

I've spent most of my winter break just trying to salvage my emotional well-being. Distance teaching sucks, and since I didn't really take any time away when I was sick, I realized that I'm nearly burned out on my job. I have since put up some pretty hard and fast boundaries, where I don't check or respond to emails during certain hours (included during this break), and I just refer people to an FAQ when it comes to certain questions I get over and over again. 

Going hiking at least once a week has been good for my soul as well. Pat sometimes even joins me!

Cold hiking the Sunday before Christmas on the C&O Canal at Weverton (lock 33)

A chilly day on Wye Island to see the Wye Island Holly Tree

Harpers Ferry and Virginius Island have ruins to explore

A ghost town outside Ellicott City along the Patapsco

Gettysburg Battlefield at sunset

Pat on the Catoctin Aqueduct

I've also gotten back into making earrings and candles and stuff. I've even revived my Etsy shop and sold several things! 

My friends apparently really liked these earrings

Pouring some small, vanilla scented candles

Anyway, I'm hoping to keep the mental well-being going now that my physical well-being has mostly returned.

Reading more. Hiking more. Exercising, even though it's at home. 

2021 didn't exactly walk in and scream, "Here I am!" and I think we're all a little wary of high hopes right now. But, a girl can dream that this year really will be better, can't she?

Shoot for the moon