Undaunted

We’re setting out next week on our first tentative journey. In keeping with the exoticism of our recent travels to Jordan and Japan, we have chosen to get back in the game with a few days in Phoenix, where we’ve rented a little apartment next door to a Trader Joe’s and across the street from something called Hilton Hawaiian Village that, according to Google Maps, is missing the “Hilton” and the “Hawaiian”, but just might be a village if you generously interpret “strip mall”.

Nonetheless, it is travel, and I felt it validated a blog post so I could reach out to all of you. I’d mention our year, but you all lived it with us and so I acknowledge every last miserable piece of it and move on.

We emerge, vaccinated, cautious and fully-masked and are setting out to reclaim our travel savvy. Some things seem the same. For example, I offered to let Ron plan a small portion of our trip. We are spending three nights in Sedona. Having spent a night in Sedona 8 years ago, I can tell you without hesitation that it is a wonderful spot for some hiking. Last time, we trekked from the parking lot of our budget motel (turned out to be 8 miles shy of Sedona, but hey, under $100) over to the bakery and then also (separate hike) across the highway to a bar. This time, we’re going to blow the budget and stay in the same zip code as Sedona and I thought, while we are doing things right, we might as well see what all the hiking fuss is about.

So we are going to go hiking as an actual activity – words I thought I would never share with you. (Any comments, Book Club?) And, in the Sedonan spirit of hiking, liberalism, personal growth and vortex exploration (a Sedona thing – will report back when I have a better understanding), I say to Ron – do you want to help plan our hikes in Sedona?

Ron never gets to hike. I think he actually likes it but I try not to ask in case he gets the wrong idea and thinks I want to set out on some sort of journey that might get my shoes muddy. I’m all in favor of walking – I’ll go 8 or 10 happy miles past interesting architecture and European pedestrian cores, popping in along the way for a latte, happy in the knowledge that, should I need to pee, I can sneak into a McDonald’s or a Safeway. But when you take me hiking, something goes haywire in my brain. On a hike, I can’t tell where I am or how much farther I have to go. I don’t know how to marshal my strength or preserve my stamina. As I type this, my mind connects a hiking/2020/COVID analogy that perhaps you notice as well.

But back to Ron. He agrees to oversee the hiking plan and then, in classic Ron fashion, he does nothing. I have, in the interim, purchased the airline tickets (6000 frequent flier miles for a round trip on Delta – great pride), booked the hotels, rented the car, and purchased timed entries to a few sites. I’ve mapped out the attractions, cross-checked opening hours and proximity to other sites and researched a famous self-serve/self-decorate doughnut shop in case I need to ingratiate myself with Ron in Phoenix after a poor hiking performance in Sedona.

Finally and inevitably, I cannot take it anymore and I ask Ron when he is planning to work on the hiking portion of the trip. And he says that when we check into the Sedona hotel, he will ask the desk clerk for a recommendation and he looks completely satisfied with that as an entire plan.

I’ve missed sharing our travels with you but at least here we are, anxious to be back doing what we love best. We’re hopeful that we’ll be heading to Europe in May on a trip pared down from 6 countries to just Romania. We’ll see and, if we go, you’ll hear all about it. We’re also hoping to be in France in late September. I’ll leave you with one more shot from our travel-free year and I’ll talk to you from Sedona.

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