Blue View - Staying Safe on the Road

We’re not doing a lot of camping without Blue

When Blue, our Ford Transit van conversion, broke down a little over three weeks ago, we naively thought the repairs would take a few days, or perhaps even a week to complete, so rather than heading back to Las Vegas, we rented a car and continued our exploration of Arizona.  Our road trip morphed from an extended camping/hiking/biking trip with an occasional hotel stay to a road trip in a rental car and hotel rooms every night. With the pandemic raging, however, it’s obvious that the new plan raises the odds of contracting and/or giving someone else COVID-19, and we’re becoming much more careful about the precautions we take to prevent that from happening. I wrote a long blog on the topic during our last road trip, but we’ve upped our diligence since then. Here are our latest thoughts on how to stay as safe as possible while traveling.

The signs are usually there, but not always enforced.

Jamie, the desk clerk at this hotel, does take mask wearing seriously

Hotels

We’ve talked to hotel staff on several occasions regarding the precautions they take to prevent the spread of Covid-19, and all have assured us that they follow CDC guidelines and work hard to sanitize each room between guests, but when we observe that the desk clerk and cleaning staff aren’t wearing masks or their masks are down around their chins, we have our doubts. I’m sure many establishments are extremely conscientious, but we always assume the worst. We wear our masks in all the common areas, avoid the elevators, and always sanitize our hands after signing in or opening doors.

Once we get to our room, the luggage is plopped down on the floor, and we get to work sanitizing. We bring a spray bottle of alcohol and a micro-fiber cloth and I wipe down the fridge, microwave and any surface we’re likely to touch... flat surfaces, tv remote, phone, light switches, door handles, door edges and frames, toilet, sink, etc. While l’m doing that, Marcie removes the bedspread, folds it and stashes it in the closet, then starts unpacking our toiletries, food, refrigerator items, etc. in the areas I’ve sanitized. I’m reasonably confident that the sheets and pillowcases are washed between guests, but just to be safe, I give the pillows a light alcohol misting. Then we wash our hands and relax. We’re like a well-oiled machine, and can usually sanitize our room in less than 10 minutes.

Fun with mask mandates.

Meals

We’re very reluctant to eat in restaurants. On a few rare occasions, we’ve eaten lunch at establishments that have open, outdoor tables, but for the most part, when we do choose to eat restaurant food, we use curb-side pickup or have it delivered. The majority of the time, however, we prefer to buy what we need at the local grocery. 

A typical hotel breakfast these days.

Provisions for tonight’s dinner

• Our lunches are typically cheese and crackers, sliced turkey, or sandwiches at a park bench or picnic table. When it’s too cold or too hot, we lunch in the car.

• Dinners are usually eaten in our room, and are some combination of grocery store fare... chicken roasters, sliced turkey meat, pre-cooked shrimp, along with a salad. We usually buy the packaged pre-made salads... Asian, Southwest, Caesar, etc. and we bring a bowl to mix them in. We also frequently buy something we can microwave. An example is to nuke a couple of baking potatoes and top them with Lloyd’s shredded barbecue chicken and some shredded cheese. Popcorn is the snack of choice.

• Hotel breakfasts are hit or miss (mostly miss) these days. Some don’t provide any at all. Many now provide ‘grab and go’ bags which usually contain a sugary, prepackaged pastry, maybe a fruit cup or applesauce and/or perhaps a piece of fruit and a bottle of water or juice. Part of our morning ritual is for one of us (we take turns) to walk down to the front desk to pick up the breakfast bags, so we can grouse about the contents before eating what we brought with us - usually a cup of yogurt and a hard boiled egg. We really like a good coffee in the morning, so rather than getting the coffee that’s usually available in the lobby or brewing the weak in-room coffee, we idulge ourselves by bringing our own coffe maker, coffee and cream.

We can’t always get hard boiled eggs in the local grocery, and since these are one of our  morning staples, I decided to see whether it was possible to use the hotel room microwave to hard boil our own eggs. It turns out that you can, and in the next Blue View, I’ll share the recipe... as well as how many eggs I exploded perfecting the technique. 

So as not to leave you sitting on the edge of your seats for an entire week, I’ve pre-empted Marcie’s next blog to tell you all about it. See you Monday.