Just a couple weeks in and we’ve already entered the lazy days of summer. Swim most days. Have some family or small group of friends over on the weekends. Hope it doesn’t rain yet complain when it’s too hot.
That happens quick when there’s no place else to go. S popped into the nearest mall one day last week to return a few things and said maybe half the stores were open. Despite everyone being sick of being cooped up, she said there were not many people there. I don’t think our girls are interested in going to the mall anyway, but it would be nice if you could go wander around for an hour or so.
We’ve also reached high anxiety time for our summer vacation. We are supposed to go to Hawaii in late July. As of the moment I’m typing this, the islands remain relatively closed to outside travelers. We could go, but we would be forced to quarantine for two weeks. Which kind of defeats the point of taking a one-week trip.
S called our resort yesterday and they cheerful told her that they anticipate re-opening in the middle of July. However, from all we’ve read, it sounds like the islands will not open up to mainland travelers first, but rather only allow in visitors from Asian and Pacific countries that have Covid under control.
We are still hoping that something changes. But I woke up today to an email from American Airlines saying our flights between the mainland to Kauai have been cancelled. I checked and there are some other flights available the same days but I don’t know if those will soon get wiped out, too.
I’ve been very torn about whether to go. It would be easy just to re-book for next summer and hope the world is in a better place then. But as of now our hotel rooms are not refundable so we’ve stuck to “If they’re open, we’re going.” I imagine we could finagle either a re-booking or cancellation given all that’s going on, but we want to push that out as long as we can.
We’ve been looking at backup plans, mainland travel that would put us on a beach where we can just post up and not have to deal with too many crowds. Those spots are not easy to find, as I’m sure many of you know. I’ve been making the joke that we will end up at the resort down in French Lick, IN. They do have a couple world-class golf courses, but I don’t think that would be viewed as a suitable replacement for Hawaii by the rest of the family.
The girls and I are going camping with our old neighbors (they are going to Hawaii with us, too) for a couple nights this week. I’ll fill you in on that after we get back, but this will be the girls’ first ever official camping outing. They’ve done some backyard camping but never at a campsite where there’s not a house to run into if it rains or they get skittish. I don’t think I’ve properly camped since about 1984, so it’s not like I’m some expert. Once today’s rain passes through it looks like it will be a gorgeous couple of days, with highs in the 70s and the humidity disappearing. We’re all looking forward to it.
The final piece of news for this post is that my tenure as kickball coordinator at St. P’s came to an end last night. Four years was enough and my successor, a friend of mine who coaches L’s class, was officially voted in. It was a pretty good four years. Not too much drama (there was that one game in the spring of 2018…), some pretty successful teams, and I made a lot of good friends in the parents who coached for me. I will help coach C’s team in the fall, assuming there is a fall season, and then officially be done with youth kickball.