It has been about 3 months since my last post. So what's new? What happened? Where are we? Well, let me see if I can sum up the last three months in short order.
In late March we had been camping at Roosevelt lake Campground, laying up for a house sit in Flagstaff. A week before the house-sit was to begin, it was canceled. No surprise to us since Japan happened to be the home owner's destination. Since that gave us two extra weeks to fill, we bumped up our reservation to the Grand Canyon. We knew it would be a bit frosty, but we were prepared. However, within a few days, the ranger evicted everyone from the campground. We had the morning to pack and were on the road heading now, to Sedona to stay at Dead Horse State Park, about a two-hour drive to the northwest.
While the state of Washington seemed to bloom in terms of virus infections, Arizona was taking a very lackluster approach to quarantine and isolation compared to the rest of the nation. While in Dead Horse, we noticed a high number of California residents who had picked up the kids, loaded the campers, and got out of Dodge. It was a remarkable contrast seeing how a National Forest Campground was handling the situation compared to how the state was handling the same issue. But we took precautions as best we could and hunkered down for the few days before our new reservation start date at the Grand Canyon. As the days progressed, it became increasingly apparent that at some point, our options for the future would be uncertain at best, and in the worse case, non-existent. Heading back east became an ever-increasing reality, but when? As it would turn out, that decision was made for us.
Two days before our Grand Canyon start date, we received an email that our dates for camping were canceled, our fees refunded. As the day progressed, more and more of the reservations that we had made in Arizona and Idaho were canceled as well. Almost our entire itinerary for the 2020 spring and summer was vaporizing before us. At the same time, we noticed that New York and New England seemed to be taking steps in the direction of possibly closing their borders. It was time to head east. It was time to pack.
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