South Dakota was such a great COVID Summer 2020 vacation spot for so many reasons. We loved our 1 night in the Badlands and 5 nights settled in Hill City. Hill City was such a good location and I wouldn’t have wanted to stay in any other town. We loved Trails End Cabins with Mary and Doug and the huge 3 bedroom 3 bath double wide “cabin” we had. We had so much space, so there were hardly any fights from the kids and the outside area made our late afternoons and evenings so wonderful. The outdoor patio space was awesome, backing up to the forest with so much wildlife there to watch, every single time we looked outside.
Addison said we have 6 amazing days. Delaney did “I don’t want to leave this place.”
When I posed the question to the family: "Now that you have been here in South Dakota, what do you think of when I say South Dakota?"
Cool Rocks, rock climbing, "faces", curvy roads, no cell phone service, praire dogs, donkeys, bison horses, being in the car and tunnels! I would add nature, small town feel, historical and simple.
We were supposed to stay through Day 7 and not leave until 5:50PM, however changes due to COVID-19 had something else in mind. In order to get home to San Antonio on that Wednesday, we had only one choice presented to us 4 days prior, to leave on a 7:30AM flight, giving up our last day. We could have easily stayed 2-3 more full days in the area and had plenty that I considered doing - 1880 Train, ATV, Rock Climbing Lessons, Deadwood and Sturgis, Reptile World, Bear Country, Devils Tower, and an afternoon in Rapid City.
My Thoughts About Traveling During COVID-19 Global Pandemic
It is a controversial topic, for sure. But we have managed 2 pretty major US vacations since May 29, 2020 during this pandemic. There were five reasons we took into serious consideration before we took these trips this Summer.
1. In very large part, it was because both of these trips were 100% planned and booked prior to us ever hearing the word COVID-19. That simple fact allowed for us to sit on the trips and decide very last minute up to the hours before, if would go, without investing time in the middle of a pandemic on planning and booking them. If they hadn't been booked by late February, then I doubt I would have been planning vacations across the U.S.
2. We were confident that we could keep our family safe on the airplanes and in the airports, (which was 90% of our trip's risk, since we were staying in extremely rural parts of the country.) That confidence came from knowing our children and feeling like they were mature enough to follow our rules, wear masks at all times, and listen when we told them not to touch things, stay close, wash hands and put hand gel on every 10 minutes while in airports. They travel a ton, so this helped as well.
3. The 2 places we had randomly booked where 2 of the most rural type of family vacations you could take, which gave us confidence. South Dakota was number 42/50 of states with COVID-19 cases, when we left, and we knew social distancing would be easy once off the plane.
4. The worst case scenario was if one of us got sick and we assumed that could happen at a 50% likelihood. We assumed worst case, that all five of us would get it, and took into consideration the time frame that it would keep us all five at home and 100% quarantined (possibly 20-30 days for all five of us to get it and get through it.) In addition, we felt that the 5 of us were in very good health to risk getting it and that we would not add to hospital admissions and stress to our health care community. We also knew that we would we recovered by the time school started either in person or even virtually.
5. Another big reason that we took chances with these vacations was that we took doing a strict quarantine, afterwards, very seriously. We proactively talked to the kids about how hard it would be not even to see neighborhood friends and got their buy in. We sent texts to all neighbors letting them know (kids and adults) not to even ring the doorbell until specific dates. It was hard, even for us adults, each trip having to say no to fun get togethers. But it was part of the trade of of taking these trips and we were determined to set a socially responsible example to our kids. We did a 10 day strict quarantine after Smokey Mountains and flight to/from Atlanta and staying in a couple of hotels with there were other people. We did a strict 5 day quarantine after getting home from South Dakota, having read and gained confidence that if we had been exposed, even on the very last day, there was a 99% likelihood that one out of the five of us would have begun to show symptoms by day 5.
In hindsight, our gut decisions paid off having incredible trips and being COVID free, however, I wanted to journal here our decision making process, as I look forward to reading it in 40 years and seeing if my future self thinks I was crazy when I was 40 years old!
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