Spring Break - COVID-19 Edition - Chapter 1 - Preamble

Spring Break!!! Woo!!!

Actually, as the years go on, the event has become more and more complicated. Three kids in two different schools last year was one thing - but this year, three kids in three different schools increased the complexity. And add to that the fact that I just started a new job… No worries - we would ignore the adult child, and that will simplify things!!! Well, sort of. Still, with the two youngers in two different schools, of course their spring break didn’t line up. So we took the older child’s break, took the younger child out of school, and planned on heading to Phoenix to visit with the Grandparents who we haven’t seen in Phoenix for a couple of years now. Easy peasy!!!

The plan was to drive (yes drive, we are from the midwest afterall) from Aurora to the Grand Canyon. We were going to take Mel the Malibu (Maylee named it), our luggage, and all of the animals (Heinz and Zaz), and drive straight through to the Grand Canyon on Saturday. We had an animal friendly hotel for Saturday and Sunday night. We would go see the big hole in the earth mainly on Sunday, meet with Grandpa and Grandma Grady for a meal and dump Heinz with them, then go to Sedona on Monday for some hiking and crystal gazing. Then down to Apache Junction, hang with the Grandparents, swim, eat, go four wheeling, and probably do a spring training game. On Thursday we were going to take a slow road back home, potentially visiting Uncle Al in Albuquerque (no better way to see Albuquerque than with an uncle named Al, afterall), and roll back into Aurora late Friday or early Saturday morning.

The first changes that were getting in our way were weather related. We couldn’t isolate a good spring training game to go to since the long term weather outlook was showing rain and cooler temperatures. It also didn’t look super nice at the Grand Canyon, so we called an audible on Thursday and decided we would flip flop the order of our trip and go to Apache Junction first, then Grand Canyon later in the week. Sweet!

Well, that was until Coronavirus! For future us, and for those that are living completely under a rock, The Coronavirus and COVID-19 have taken over the world, and it has escalated quickly over the last several days in this country.

Ethan, the one that wasn’t joining us for the trip, convinced us that traveling to a retirement community might not be in the best interest of public health. I, personally, didn’t think it was such a big deal, but we eventually agreed that it was probably a bad idea. The signs were lining up. My work had just closed their offices for three weeks, and the kids’ schools had just canceled school for at least two weeks.

So, we called another audible, and decided to not go to Apache Junction or Arizona at all, and instead we would spend a few days in the southwest corner of Colorado, a region we hadn’t visited yet in our years as residents. First we would weather the weekend at home, and try our hands at “social distancing” as best as we could.