Travel Alternatives during Covid-19 Pandemic
July 20, 2020
During this time of uncertainty especially in the U.S. due to the Surging Covid-19 cases travel can seem like the last thing on your mind. But here at Bald Traveler HQ we are getting anxious from not being able to get out and explore. We haven’t left our house except for essential places in over four months.
So we set out to find a way to safely travel and get out social distance and still be able to see things. We have ruled out air travel as an unnecessary risk so our travels are limited to travel by car.
Hotels
Hotels are an option but we feel the risk of staying out a hotel is greater then we are willing to take. Most Chain hotels and larger Boutique have enhanced cleaning to ensure your room is clean, but a lot of hotels use a shared air system which could transfer air from one room to another.
AirBnB
We will be taking a week trip to an AirBnB soon. Our Criteria was it had to be a whole house or Condo. Not a basement lockout or anything that shares the A/C with another unit or part of the house. One of our requirements is that the host uses Enhanced Cleaning of the unit between guests. We have found that some hosts are only allowing 4 night stays which makes it harder to plan out a week.
Car Camping
Since I own a Jeep we also looked into car camping as I could add a roof top tent to the Jeep which we could remove when we weren’t using it. But I was informed that Mrs. Bald Traveler informed me that she needed A/C and a toilet shower if she was to go camping.
RV (Camper) Camping
Since tent camping was nixed by the boss, I moved on to looking at a camper. I had a few requirements outside of A/C and a toilet and shower. We were looking for a trailer that could be pulled by the Jeep and fit in our 8′ tall Garage. We also didn’t want a new trailer if we could help it. We searched around and found a few used trailers and were able to purchase one for a price we were happy with. It was located in Tuscon and 90 minutes from our house in Phoenix. With Campers you have all kinds of options from small teardrops that can be pulled by a car to large motor homes that can be your home away from home.
We’ll have a tour of the trailer out shortly on Youtube and will embed it here for viewing.
What Are Our Plans For Travel?
For the next year our plan is to travel the west coast with our trailer and see National Parks and other places where we can social distance safely. We are also going to go to Forks WA next year as my wife is a big Twilight fan. With our trailer we can go on the road for multiple days and pull into a rest area, truck stop, or Walmart along the way and comfortably sleep in the trailer overnight. We can also cook our meals in the trailer on the road and use the trailers restroom for an emergency toilet on the road if we need it. We feel that traveling with a trailer in the current climate is the best way for us to stay safe. And if we need to Quarantine traveling between states we can just pull into a camp ground for 14 days and be comfortable in our tiny house. We could even work from the trailer if we needed to.
In the future we may look to rent out our trailer once the current pandemic is contained and it will be another way for us to support our travels going forward with some additional income coming in.
Until we can travel together again, Stay Safe
The Bald Traveler…. Dave…