chicagoflyer1976

I went to Vegas 5 times between July and December. Love the bargains and quietness of Vegas during COVID.
Also went to Dubrovnik in September.

Global Adventurer

Love Dubrovnik!

Presguy

I realized the best Covid-induced travel, for me, happened a few days before I posted this thread - driving my mom and dad to get their first vaccine doses.

nd2010

There you have it. Even travel restrictions that have nearly zero enforcement have an effect on reducing travel.

AlanInDC

From summer 2020 to now, roadtrips to these areas:
Lancaster, PA
Staunton & Lexington, VA
Easton, MD
Milford, CT
Roanoke, VA
Charlottesville, VA

Without covid, probably none of these would have happened.

AMflier

We pretty much did both of these. Cancelled our CA trip in the summer and spent a week at a Camp (small cottage) on Third Lake near Old Forge in the Adirondacks. We never even thought about going to that part of the 'dacks before. We loved it and plan on returning.

We normally ski in northern VT over the Christmas break and had planned to go to Arapahoe Basin ovek MLK and Taos over President's week. Due to New York's return from travel quarantine rules, we didn't want to go out of state. So it's back to the Adirondacks to Gore for Xmas and President's week, (I had never been) and Plattekill in the Catskills for MLK. I recommend both areas.

I've lost people I care about to this bug. If staying close to home helps, I'll stay close to home. I have no patience for the selfish people breaking quarantine because the rules aren't enforced.

Loren Pechtel

Sure, if you simply head out into empty desert. However, that tends to not work too well--you're constantly going up and down on soil that's close to it's natural support angle--and thus very prone to sliding when you step on it. The vegetation is also prone to being nasty. Then all too often you'll run into cryptobiotic soil that you aren't supposed to walk on (one footprint will damage it for decades.) If it hikes well it probably already is a trail. I've tried going where there's no trail, it doesn't work very well. About your best bet is to find a good-sized wash and follow it, but if the terrain isn't pretty flat you're liable to run into a pour-over.

I'd love to go there--but it's 7 1/2 hours one way from home.

i0wnj00

I drove to Yuma, AZ for a haircut last May when my hair stylist closed up her shop, then I got her number for an appointment. I was going to do make another appointment, she didn’t pick up her phone, but luckily I found a place down in San Diego so I didn’t have to go far. Arizona or Nevada will be go to states if I need to do “non-essential” things. Other than that my travel habits haven't changed...

GUWonder

I've had to engage in some additional travel because of the pandemic. For example, travel to get Covid-19 testing performed as a condition of cross-border travel and/or for other reasons related to the cross-border trips. And when the testing results don't come back fast enough, it can involve yet more travel to get yet another Covid-19 test done. There's more than just that too, but it's the travel to meet testing requirements that is a new sort of cause for travel for me.

invisible

Last time I had a flight (any) was 18 months ago. I have not has such gap between flight since 1996.

Considering that I am contained in 9 by 20km area, all my travels have been on foot and public transport.

catbox9

I certainly don't want to make this political or whatever but I very heavily am a huge hypocrite if I stand by my (very strong) political beliefs as I have taken plenty of non-essential travel since COVID started. In fact, I managed to qualify for UA 1K for the first time since 2015.

I went through an odd point in my life the past few years where I continued to travel but had some issues that probably should have been addressed and ended up taking a lot of trips I ended up hating. Just as COVID was getting started I cut ties with some toxic aspects of my life and I have a very renewed passion for travel that I haven't had in a very long time.

In terms of the question,

A buddy of mine and I went to Asia (sort of) in March just as things were really going south. We were supposed to go Singapore-Cambodia-Myanmar-Singapore for 2 weeks but it ended up 1 night in Singapore, 1 night in 2 different Cambodian Cities, and 1 night in Taipei for an insanely rushed 4 day trip to Asia.

Since then I've done mostly solo travel and tried to focus mainly on visiting random places I would never otherwise go while flying around the country. I've ended up in some very non-conventional places like Charleston, WV, Tennessee (twice), Kentucky, South Carolina (twice), and most recently Wichita, KS. Despite being places that wouldn't have made my top 100 travel destinations on 1/1/20 it's been great.

For my next trip I'm planning on visiting the two largest American cities....that I have never otherwise been to.....Jacksonville and Austin.

With that said, my 2020 (like many others) got ruined pretty badly. I had tickets to the Olympics which has been a dream of mine since I was a kid watching the 1996 games with my dad. I also had tickets on the Island Hopper which has been a dream of mine since I started flying UA. I even managed to book the segments individually and add stopovers on various islands.

For whatever it's worth, I'm also a healthcare provider (nurse practitioner) so I do try to be mindful of the fact I am not technically following guidelines by traveling. I'm not inherently extroverted so my interactions with others while traveling is relatively minimal. I have also been vaccinated (Moderna, both doses) so I have that working in my favor. I also sometimes wonder why travel and travel restrictions are even in place as this virus is already endemic to most everywhere in the world outside of Oceania including most of these new variants. If I can travel from LAX to NYC, how is that promoting spread any more than if I travel to Vancouver?

the810

Thousands years ago tribal thinking used to give person an evolutionary advantage and thus people whose genes supported it produced more offspring.

My home country currently reports the second highest death rate per capita in the world, so the government introduced new border restrictions because people arriving from far lower risk places are obviously the problem.

snic

Discouraging travel is just another means to reduce the transmission rate, which is the most critical variable. The higher the number of people who get infected from each infected person, the more sick people there will be at any one time, and the more difficult it will be for hospitals to handle them. The transmission rate is a function of how many interactions an infected person has with others. If you travel, you are likely to have more interactions than if you stayed home. Discouraging travel is therefore intended to have the same effect as encouraging social distancing and mask wearing. None of these measures is dramatically effective on its own, but the more of them people follow, the lower the transmission rate.

As for traveling to LAX vs Vancouver, it does seem absurd, but that's because there isn't a central authority controlling all borders in the world in a rational way. Each country has to make its own decisions. It tends to be more politically acceptable to close the border to outsiders than to impose real restrictions on travel within the country. Both types of measures would reduce travel, but if only the first is acceptable to the public, then at least closing the borders reduces travel somewhat.

catbox9

Many of us are probably biased because we travel more than average, but I think the notion of travel has really been unfairly maligned because of this pandemic.

I recently drove just under 100 miles to the California Central Valley to visit a friend for their birthday. At the time we were encouraged (but not required) to avoid traveling more than 100 miles from home so I theoretically complied with travel requirements/suggestions. I went to a bar with my friend and a few others and was shocked to see that not only was it open, it was crowded beyond even pre-COVID capacity and was nearly impossible to move around once inside. No masks were in sight and the only way you would know COVID existed was the occasional "(expletive) Newsom" signs posted throughout the bar.

This bar is almost certainly a super spreader event but people don't really put any effort to stop it from happening and nobody really gets on my case for going. When I suggest wanting to travel to say Canada people think I'm irresponsible and reckless because I need to "stop the spread". Socially distanced travel does a lot more to "stop the spread" than mass gatherings near your home community. If everyone stayed home that would be the ideal solution, but that's not feasible. Telling people they should stay within 100 miles from their home seems rather illogical as you are no more likely to spread the virus by driving 75 miles vs 150.

Since pretty much everyone agrees the planes themselves do not cause viral spread but the airports could, maybe we can just lift travel restrictions but ban all flights that contain layovers and only permit non-stop travel. I'm mostly kidding as this would be impossible to enforce but I suppose airlines could only sell non-stop itineraries.

FlyDeltaMD88

I have to ask, why Milford? Was it to visit family or something? My parents live a town over, just curious.