@thumper1 - same for D. Her move is likely to be in early June. Easily a 12+ hour drive. Current thought was that we’d drive down with her, get her settled in and then drive back - will have to see how feasible that will be. The state she’s moving to also has quarantine regulations set right now.
@kjofkw How did you check how full a Southwest flight is? I know how to check all the other major airlines, but not Southwest.
@thumper1 My husband has to stay in hotels when he works at out of town clinics. He has a cooler in the car with his drinks, lunches, cereal and milk for breakfast and snacks. He is armed with hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, and Clorox clean up spray. After a touchless check in, he cleans his room, at least the surfaces he is in contact with, before he brings his stuff in. It takes him a long time to get situated, but it is just what he has to do.
My sister and brother in law made the trip north from Florida last weekend- a 2 day trip to NE PA. They stop each year in Florence, SC (I think) at a motel that accepts animals. They wiped everything down and felt OK about the sanitation. They got fast food while on the road. They weren’t thrilled with having to do the trip, but it all went OK.
I’m flying next weekend. Southwest. I’ll let you know. Not very long non-stop flight. I’m fine with it. Remember that a lot of folks haven’t cancelled yet, so 50% occupancy on the flight might not hole. I haven’t checked mine.
We are considering trying a staycation at friends’ rentals, just for a change of pace. It will be in our home island, but just a different place. Will see how things go. I know neither of the friends are renting out their places at this time and haven’t for several months, so things should be virus free with all this time of just sitting.
Hawaii has a mandatory 14 day quarantine for anyone who enters from out-of-state or travels from one island to another.
As far as protests go, the state government will listen to residents more than visitors. Any protests that the state government would pay attention to would be from residents whose tourist-oriented businesses and local economies are losing due to lack of visitors.
I was happy the Maine governor didn’t cave today as expected. She didn’t change restrictions at all. The big announcement was that the state is partnering with Idexx to triple the number of tests available. They think that will be sufficient for all the tests that doctors want to order.
I’m curious about that too. Maybe called and asked the agent?
If you have been driving on TX freeways, are the major rest areas open? My husband has an appointment at MDAnderson at the end the of the month, so we would be driving in from the N. Not sure he could make it w/out highway rest areas open.
https://www.txdot.gov/inside-txdot/media-center/statewide-news/006-2020.html says that “The safety rest areas on highways throughout the state remain open.” There is also a phone number to call if you want to verify that.
Thank you!
This group is invaluable . Someone found what I was searching for faster than I did.
Leaving today for our 800+ mile road trip to drop D and her car at her co-op. We confirmed rest stops are open, our hotel is mostly empty (picked rooms yesterday and there are only two other occupancies on our entire wing), and still only a dozen passengers on my flight home. We have our masks and hand sanitizers and are hoping for the best. I’ll report back on how it went.
Enjoy the time with your D and the sights (flowers, etc) along the way.
Some aspects of travel should never change. Life is too short to miss out on them - with or without the pandemic.
How do you check the other airlines? By looking at the seating assignments?
Just look at the seat map on the airline’s own website (or on sites like Expedia that shows available seat map), as if you were to book a new ticket. However, Southwest is one of the few exceptions.
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When are your flights? It could be that those people were rebooked from other flights but just have not canceled. My daughter falls in that category. I bought her ticket on SWA in early April to fly home from school (San Diego) at the end of May. It was a direct/nonstop flight to BWI. Sometime in the last 10 days, they notified her of a change - they put her on an earlier flight with a connection in Denver. Of course, this is rather annoying b/c we hoped for her to have the least amount of contact/exposure. That said, we are canceling her trip home and will rebook sometime later in the summer. But as of right now, she’s still booked on that end of May flight.
I’m guessing there are others like her currently booked on flights who just haven’t bothered to cancel yet as they were waiting to see whether things might improve for travel, or like my daughter, her plans have been evolving. She was going to be home for the whole summer but now will stay in San Diego and continue working. We just found out yesterday her fall semester is starting three weeks early so we are glad we’d already made plans for her to stay at school all summer. She will only fly home this summer for a visit if she doesn’t need to quarantine when she gets here.
^Southwest (and other airlines too) have cancelled and consolidated a massive number of flights. Most airlines will keep their flights less than 2/3 full, but that still means potentially too many people on a plane for proper social distancing, especially on popular routes.
I figured my daughter’s flight might change based on what I’d been reading in the news about consolidating flights. Not an issue now since she most likely won’t even come home at all this summer.
Maybe the seat map doesn’t accurately portray the number of seats that have been reserved by passengers. Wouldn’t the airline black out some seats in order to ensure proper distancing?
All Alaska flights I looked at have middle seats blocked off. I am sure a family flying together can seat three in a row.