The whole situation was bizarre and hilarious and we couldn't help but be empathetic for the poor employee working the rental desk. We hoofed it over to the rental agency and hilariously, the car waiting for us was a gigantic 7-passenger Dodge Grand Caravan minivan (when we originally reserved a small sedan).īelieve me when I say that being two average-sized humans and a small dog (pictured below), we really didn't have a need for a minivan. Finally, after about two and half hours after our originally scheduled pick-up time, we received a call that a car was available for us. When calling for an update an hour after our scheduled pick-up time, they let us know that we had moved up to 6th place in line. With nothing else we could do, we sat at home and waited. All they could tell us was that we were 9th in line on the waitlist, and would call us if/when they had a car available for us that day. They couldn't guarantee how long we'd be on the waitlist for, even. They were moving cars and cleaning cars- which is so important in the time of COVID- as best as they could. We were put on a waitlist, nothing else they could do. On the morning of our Assateague trip, a half-hour before we were scheduled to go pick up our reserved car, we received a phone call from the rental company saying that they were completely out of vehicles. However, this was our first time renting since the pandemic broke out. We've rented cars from the same rental agency multiple times now, including during peak holiday times (Thanksgiving and Christmas), and we've never had any hiccups before with them running out of cars. The few times a year where we find ourselves needing a car, we rent. It just hasn't made sense for us to have a car when we live right in the middle of a city, where parking is a nightmare and everything we need is within walking distance. We had to rent a car to go on this trip, since we haven't owned a car for a few years now. We brought a ton of face masks with us for times where we might not have been able to maintain a distance of over 6 feet away from others, though that didn't end up being a problem at the beach.Īll in all, we felt pretty comfortable with these precautions to reduce risks of potentially spreading COVID-19 (if we happened to have it and just be asymptomatic, though we are/were feel 100% healthy), or of catching it ourselves. We had hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, etc. We brought a big cooler along with food and 3 liters of water so that we wouldn't have to visit any shops or restaurants along the way or at our destination. We had other plans to mitigate COVID risks and stuck to it. But most public health experts seem to agree that camping outdoors is considered a fairly low-risk activity, with the increases in hazard coming from contact in shared facilities (communal picnic areas, public restrooms and showers, etc), which we avoided as much as possible. True, we had to cross state lines (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Maryland, about a 2.5-3 hour drive) to visit Assateague. So, camping at Assateague by ourselves in comparison seems a bit more responsible. So far, our "bubble" in all of 2020 has just been the three of us- me, husband, & Stormy the dog. Doing so while the coronavirus is far from being controlled in the U.S. We would have to spend overnights with them as a result too. We haven't visited/seen any of our family members in over seven months, since we'd have to cross multiple state lines and travel quite a distance to do so. Traveling at all during a worldwide pandemic is something we grapple with. However, visiting Assateague Island in Maryland had been on my travel list for such a long time, and we had managed to book a coveted oceanside beach campsite months ago, so off to Maryland we went. This trip is yet another one that doesn't follow the theme of this blog at all, as taking a trip to the beach in July is pretty much the definition of traveling during the busy high-season.
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