Text & Image

For many people, the pandemic put travel plans on pause. What about you? Are you traveling, or planning to travel, again? If so, when, where, and under what conditions?

The first priority for travel for me was Hawaii I live and work in the American Southwest Before the pandemic, about once a year I would visit my parents and other relatives in Hawaii and on the West Coast When the pandemic lockdowns first started, I flirted with the idea of flying to Hawaii to wait out the pandemic there In the end it was two years before I was able to go, from October 2019 to October 2021 The picture above is probably the most unglamorous photo of Hawaii you've ever seen My parents are low-key hoarders and the house is full of boxes, newspapers, clothes, take out containers, and the residue of seventy years of living I realize how fortunate I am to be able to afford to fly back and forth, and to have parents who are still living independently, in reasonably good health I'm grateful the vaccines and other preventive measures lowered the case rates enough to be able to fly back without having to go through a quarantine. If it had persisted longer than a few years, I don't know what I would have done