After setting off on our 5 year, 50 state road trip, Shae and I came up with a great idea.
There are four time zones in the continental US, with Hawaii in a fifth time zone. Seeing as we were planning on visiting Hawaii as our 50th and final state, why not celebrate New Year’s Eve in five different time zones along our trip.
So that’s what we set out to do. New Year’s Eve 2018 was spent in Denver, CO which is Mountain Time Zone, then 2019 was in Nashville, TN which is Central Time Zone.
When planning out 2020 at the start of the year, we decided to bring in 2021 on the west coast to hit Pacific Time Zone, with New Year’s Eve in Times Square, New York the following year as our Eastern Time Zone entry.
Changed Plans
But then COVID hit and our 2020 plans changed. My parents had to cancel their visit from the UK and we decided to head back east to be nearer Shae’s parents rather than staying out west.
We’ve tried to be as responsible as we can considering we’re traveling full-time. We’ve been spending much longer in each place so that we didn’t have to move as frequently, not eating inside any restaurants, focusing mainly on outdoor activities, etc.
That’s meant we haven’t been able to do our road trip anywhere close to what it was like in pre-COVID times, nor visit as many states as we normally would in a year. As a result, 2020 has been a bit of a write-off road trip-wise, so we’re figuring we’ll need to add a year to the road trip. That’s a shame because “6 years, 50 states” doesn’t sound quite as snappy!
We’re still holding out hope that we can celebrate New Year’s Eve in New York at some point on the road trip, but that’s not going to be this year and it’s highly unlikely it’ll be an option in 2021 either if we want the full Times Square experience.
New Plans
With 2020 being a write-off and us planning on extending the road trip by a year, that effectively gives us a freebie in terms of time zones. Shae and I therefore decided to open up our New Year’s Eve options as it didn’t really matter which time zone we celebrate the end of 2020 in.
There were a couple of requirements we had though:
- We wanted to be somewhere fun
- We wanted to stay in a nice hotel
Between us, we have a bunch of free night certificates for Hyatt, Marriott and IHG from our credit cards, so this would be a good option for them as New Year’s Eve hotel prices would be more expensive than normal despite the pandemic. That meant the second requirement above would be relatively easy to fulfill.
The main dilemma was therefore where to celebrate New Year’s Eve. We wanted to be somewhere fun, although we don’t have any plans to bring in the New Year in a crowd of people. We’re certainly not going to be heading to a bar or some kind of large grouping, even if it’s outdoors. It’s more a case of us wanting to be somewhere with a generally great atmosphere, nice vibe and which will still be decorated from the holidays.
Another factor in which city to pick was our 2021 plans. We’ll be sharing more about what we’ll be doing next year in a future post as we’ve changed plans based on what we were originally considering. The city we celebrate New Year’s Eve 2020 in would ideally be somewhat along the way to our next destination.
Our Decision
The title of this post gave it away, so it’s not like there’s any suspense here, but we ended up picking New Orleans as our New Year’s Eve destination. We visited New Orleans for Mardi Gras in 2020, about three weeks before everything shut down due to COVID.
Shae and I both loved it for different reasons (see Mardi Gras 2020: Thoughts From An Introvert & An Extrovert for why), so we were both happy to return to New Orleans so relatively soon after visiting it.
Visiting a city like New Orleans in the middle of a pandemic probably doesn’t sound like a smart idea. I can completely understand why people might think we’re being irresponsible by doing this, but we’ll be doing our utmost to not only keep ourselves safe, but everyone we’d be coming into contact with.
We always wear masks, wash our hands, use hand sanitizer, socially distance and don’t eat inside unless it’s in our own hotel room. We’re not planning on partying with other people in New Orleans, especially not on New Year’s Eve – it just seems like a fun place to be in general. It would be nice to wander down to the river if there’s some kind of fireworks display, but we won’t be doing that if it’s at all busy.
Our Hotel
After deciding on the city, it was time to pick the hotel. Our original decision was to stay at the Kimpton Hotel Fontenot as we had a couple of IHG free night certificates available. We wanted to stay three nights though and I didn’t really want to use the relatively large number of points (well, large compared to what we normally redeem for free nights) for a third night. They also charge $45 per night for parking, so that would’ve cost us $135 for the three nights. Despite having Spire Elite status with IHG, the status doesn’t come with perks like free breakfast, so we would’ve had to have paid for that too.
When visiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras earlier this year, we stayed at the Hyatt Centric New Orleans French Quarter and thought it was a great hotel. We therefore decided to book three nights there again using some of our Hyatt free night certificates. I have Globalist status with Hyatt which means that we get free parking and free breakfast, so that’ll save us money, although there is a pet fee. IHG’s Kimpton brand is pet-friendly and never charges a pet fee, but we’ll still be better off picking the Hyatt Centric because the pet fee is still cheaper than what we would’ve paid for parking and breakfast, plus my status with Hyatt means we’ll get upgraded to a suite provided they’re not sold out of them.
Final Thoughts
Shae and I are both looking forward to heading back to New Orleans for New Year’s Eve, even though its vibe will be significantly more subdued compared to Mardi Gras earlier this year.
We’ll be there more for the general atmosphere than to be partying it up, although I’m sure we’ll all be celebrating the opportunity to put 2020 behind us.
Good news/bad news:
Alaska has it’s own time zone as well.
😉
Yep, we’d considered that as well, but figured we probably wouldn’t want to be in Alaska in winter. You never know though – if it takes much longer for a COVID vaccine to be found, we might need to add a 7th year, in which case we might put Alaska back on the table later for New Year’s Eve later in the trip!
Have fun! Sounds like y’all are being careful, which is the most important thing. As fun as it is to ride on a streetcar, better not do it. We spent Christmas in New Orleans a few years ago and it was really fun although the weather had turned cold. I like walking down by the river and how it is hard to adjust your eyes to understand that the river is higher than where you are standing behind the levee.
I didn’t notice that with the levee when we were there earlier this year – we’ll have to pay attention when we’re back in December.