2020, Recapping a crazy Covid year and the vaccine!

A year ago we were sitting in Mesa Arizona happy as clams. In less than a month the news broke that China was experiencing what could become a pandemic. By late January Covid 19 found its way to America (and likely had made it here sooner). By the end of February concern crept into our minds as to how this would affect our travel plan for the summer.

Our Arizona stay would end March 1st so we decided instead of making a trip up to Washington, Oregon and Montana for the summer it would be best we just head to Texas and “hide out” until things cleared up.  We made a mad dash to the Hill Country where I had a two week reservation on Canyon Lake at a Corps of Engineers Park.

We planned to use those two weeks to figure out where we would shelter in place. Alas, a few days into our stay all COE parks closed including the one we were staying in but a Ranger visited us to let us know those of us who had reservations could stay so as to allow us time to find alternative stays.

A few days later we had another visit where we were told that since the park was closed the management decided after realizing many of us were full-timers with nowhere else to go that we could stay in the park until it reopened. Relief!!! We had a safe refuge!

How lucky were we to be able to stay at Canyon Lake in the beautiful Hill Country of Texas while the world around us tried to figure out how to live with Covid! We fell into a routine quickly and let the days pass hoping for an end to the pandemic. As the weeks passed the management became itchy to reopen and we were told that the park would reopen in May.

We now had to make new plans. We decided that we would just move around in the more rural areas as Covid seemed to be more rampant in the cities. We worked our way through east Texas and into Oklahoma. We planned to just slowly make our way  to North Carolina. Along the way we had a surprise invitation to stay at a friend’s farm in Virginia. Again, how lucky we were to have another beautiful place to hide out.

A few months later as time rolled into September we moved on down to North Carolina to socially distance visit our daughter. While in NC we made a reservation for Key Largo hoping that by the time we arrived there things would start to ease up and we could winter in southern Florida.

As we ambled our way through South Carolina, Georgia and into Florida it became apparent that we would likely not be wintering in Florida. The Florida Governor wasn’t the least bit concerned about Covid and it seemed as most of the Florida residents weren’t too concerned either. So after our stay in Key Largo we ambled our way out of Florida and beat feet to where we decided to winter.

That brings us to where we are now in South Texas on South Padre Island! We have been here a month and feel as if we are very lucky to have chosen this destination. It is really easy to social distance here as our site is spacious with lots of vegetation, birds to watch and we can visit the beach everyday with a short walk,  We will be here until the end of February. As we approach the year’s end we had one more lucky thing happen to us.

A friend of ours who lives in Brownsville Texas told us that if wanted to get the Covid vaccine early we should go the the University of Texas -  Rio Grand Valley and park our butts in line to maybe receive the vaccine. I read online how to register for the vaccine and off we went to stand in line for 6 hours, (yes 6 hours}. It took that long because those with appointments would jump to the front of the line while every now and then a trickle of those of us without appointments would be called in.

Yep, 6 hours later we were happy to have had the first shot of a two shot series of the Moderna vaccine. Four weeks from now we have our appointment for the second shot and two weeks later we should be fully vaccinated. Sharon had a headache with a low grade fever that night and both of us have a little arm soreness at the vaccination site, but otherwise all is good. Even during a pandemic we feel like we have been very fortunate this year…

Happy New year!

NOTE:  We are currently in Port Isabel in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas for the winter…