These Are Our Road Trip Plans For The Rest Of 2020

Shae and I have spent the last 6 weeks or so of our road trip sheltering in place, first in Albuquerque, NM and now in Pueblo, CO. We were due to check out of our Airbnb next week, so it was time to decide what to do next.

After chatting about what to do, we’ve got a broad plan for where we’ll be staying through October. We were originally meant to be visiting Alaska this summer, but those plans changed (pre-COVID-19), then my parents’ trip over here from the UK was cancelled (post-COVID-19).

Our intention had been to stay west through the end of the year, but we’re actually doing the opposite – we’re heading back east. Shae’s family lives in Virginia, so we’d like to see them later this year. Although it’s not safe to be meeting up with people outside of your household right now, we’re hoping it’ll be a little safer to do so by the summer.

Here’s what we have planned for the rest of the year.

May 2020 – Colorado

We were originally due to check out of our Airbnb on May 13. I checked to see if our host was booked beyond that date and he didn’t have any other reservations for another three weeks or so.

Shae and I weren’t in a hurry to move anywhere else, so we booked another 2.5 weeks in the same place. That’ll give us time to head back up to Colorado Springs to visit Garden Of The Gods now that Truffles is starting to feel better (she somehow hurt herself recently, so hasn’t been up for walking/hiking).

End of May to mid-June 2020 – Kansas

After leaving Pueblo, we’ll head back east. It’s a long journey – 35 hours to our summer destination if we did the journey all in one go, but that’s obviously not going to happen!

Instead, we’ll be stopping for a few weeks at a time along the way, with our first stop being Wichita, KS. We spent 10 days in Wichita on the road trip last year, but we’re not returning in order to do any sightseeing. Even if things have started opening up by then, we’re still going to do our best to socially distance seeing as there won’t be a vaccine anytime soon.

As a result, we’ll likely spend much of those three weeks working, but we’ll hopefully make it out to some parks or other outdoor activities. If it’s open by that point, we might have to take a quick trip up to Meadowlark Farm Orchard & Cidery because they had some of the best cider I’ve ever had and I’m not even a fan of cider.

We’re booked into a cute Airbnb which has a fenced-in yard for Truffles to have a chance to run around and play. It has great reviews and is costing us less than $40 per night, so that’ll help with the budget.

Mid-June to mid-July 2020 – Ohio

After Wichita we’ll continue on to Ohio. That’s about 12 hours away, so we’ll have to stay overnight somewhere along the way. We have several sets of friends in Ohio, so we’re hoping it’ll be safe enough to see them by the summer. Some of them have kids though, so we’ll play that one by ear.

We’ll probably stay in Cincinnati as that’s where a couple of our friends are; we can then take trips up to Columbus and Toledo during our time there. I might have to do another Cincinnati chili challenge, only this time including all the other places people suggested in the comments on that post.

Mid-July to end of August 2020 – New York & Maine

After Cincinnati we’ll head northeast. Our plan is to spend the month of August in Maine. It should be the perfect weather and a nice place to celebrate Shae’s birthday.

Shae’s mom’s birthday is the day before her’s, so her mom and stepdad will hopefully join us for a couple of weeks up there mid-month so they can celebrate their birthdays together.

We’ve never been to Maine, but we’ve only heard good things about the state, particularly Acadia National Park. The park is closed right now, but we’re hoping it’ll have reopened by the time we get there seeing as it’s three months away.

It’s a 17-18 hour drive from Cincinnati to Maine, so we’ll stop a couple of times along the way. One route would take us through Pennsylvania and Connecticut, while the other would take us along Lake Erie and through upstate New York. Having driven along Lake Erie on the way to Milwaukee in the opposite direction in 2018, it’s a beautiful drive and so I’m leaning towards that route.

We have two weeks to make that journey, so we’ll probably stay somewhere on the route for two weeks. We drove through upstate New York on the way to Vermont last year and that was a beautiful drive too, so stopping there for a couple of weeks would be no hardship and there should also be some good hiking opportunities.

September – Virginia

Shae and her mom have been missing each other a lot recently because of not being able to fly anywhere. Although we’re hoping to have them join us in Maine, we’re thinking of spending September in Virginia to see them more frequently. We probably wouldn’t stay in Portsmouth; instead, we’re thinking of staying in Roanoke or Richmond as that would give us plenty of outdoor activities to do while still only being a relatively short drive away from her family.

October – Europe???

Before COVID-19 came on the scene, Shae and I booked flights for a month in Europe this fall. We’d planned on spending a couple of weeks in Italy, then a couple of weeks in the UK and possibly Germany because a couple of our friends and their kids were going to join us for a week.

That trip is pending right now. We’re hoping it’ll be safer to travel internationally this fall, but it’s not looking too positive right now. If nothing else, Italy is almost certainly off the table as I think they’re closed to tourists through the beginning of 2021. If it’s safer to travel overseas by that point we’d still love to take that trip as we enjoy traveling with our friends, but we’ll hold off on making any decisions for another 2-3 months. By that point we’ll hopefully have a better idea as to whether there’s a spike in cases when businesses start reopening in the coming weeks and months.

The additional problem is some scientists are predicting a spike in the fall even if there isn’t one in the summer. If we were to fly to the UK at the beginning of October when it seems somewhat safe, we could still end up being caught out by a recurrence of cases. With borders potentially being closed quickly, we don’t want to find ourselves trapped overseas.

The trip is still five months away though, so there’s no need for us to make a decision yet.

November-December 2020 – Who Knows?!

With our road trip originally due to last five years, we’d planned on celebrating New Year’s Eve in five different time zones. Our first year we celebrated New Year’s Eve in Mountain Time as we were in Denver, CO. Last year was spent in Nashville, TN in Central Time and this year we’d planned on celebrating New Year’s Eve on the west coast, so Pacific Time.

Now that we’ll be on the east coast until at least the beginning of October, we might end up staying that side to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Eastern Time. We’d wanted to do that in Times Square seeing as that’s the ultimate place to be on December 31, but I doubt that’ll be going ahead this year. Even if it did, we wouldn’t go as being in a large crowd like that wouldn’t be advisable.

If nothing else, it makes sense for us to stay on the east coast until the end of the year because Shae’s dad is due to get remarried in December. We originally planned to fly back for the wedding, then when COVID-19 struck figured we’d drive. At least we’ll be that side of the country already now 🙂

Other than that though, we’ve got no clue how we’ll be seeing out 2020. At this point, we’re almost ready to call this year a wash road trip-wise, so we’ll still hopefully have a chance to celebrate New Year’s Eve in New York City on the road trip in the future.