Travel 2024 – A Rebound?

PREFACE:  Today (February 9^th) marks the completion of my 12th year of blogging.  In years past, I have dedicated an entire post to mark the milestone.  But this year, I realized the most important thing I could say is simply a big THANK YOU to all my followers, my dedicated readers, and to my occasional readers.  Whether you have been with me from day 1 or just started reading recently, I appreciate every bit of positive feedback you give me.  Thanks, and my hopes are that you will continue to find my humble blog a worthwhile place for you to visit on the Internet. 

Cheers to another year and now on with the topic at hand!

Five years after the beginning of the pandemic, I hoped that we would have been able to return to a state of normalcy—travel normalcy that is.  In 2019, I took a total of 22 trips and then in 2020 with the emergence of the pandemic, I took just two trips.  In 2021 I took seven trips and then in 2022 and 2023, I took 12 trips each year.  So as the new year started, I wondered if 2024 would be a rebound year back closer to 2019.  Stay tuned to find out.

I usually don’t like to travel in January because of the uncertainty of the weather throughout the country wreaking havoc on our plans.  But we promised our oldest son who lives south of San Francisco that we would come out early in the year to visit him and his family.  And early it was flying out there just three days after the new year began.

Early the morning we left Memphis, we had had a really hard overnight frost that prompted a 30-minute delay to deice the plane, a rare occurrence for us.  Then, as we were boarding our connecting flight in Salt Lake, it began to snow which prompted another delay for deicing.  And being a hub city, there was a long line waiting at the deicing area.

Both flights were fairly smooth, and it was nice to realize we were coming into San Francisco from the north which gave me a great arial view of the city and bay.

Over four days, we had a really nice visit.  I got to build LEGOs with our two grandkids since I always takes kits with me as gifts.  Our son cooked us a couple of delicious dinners and shared some memorable wines with us.  And to cap off the visit, we spent over four hours at the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum right on the bay in downtown San Francisco.

Fortunately, our return flights were completely trouble-free as we flew over the cold snowy landscape below.

After making our first trip of the year out to San Francisco, our second trip was to Seattle to visit our other two west coast grandchildren (and of course their parents, our daughter and son-in-law), this being a dual-purpose trip.

Even though spring had officially sprung by this trip in mid-March, it was obvious making our approach into Salt Lake City (SLC) that Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction for an early spring did not apply at this elevation.  Weather in SLC was however, fine having no impact on our connection and so we arrived on a Saturday afternoon.  But then we had a new kind of greeting.

Our daughter typically does not tell her boys that we are coming so that it will be a big surprise when they open the door.  We planned to arrive as soon as they had gotten back from an outing to knock on their door.  But this time, they were delayed entering their house while visiting with a neighbor walking by.  So, when we stepped out of our rental car, the two boys ran around outside excitedly from person to person gleefully greeting us.  It was a great welcoming to our visit!

After getting to visit with everyone for a while, we went out to dinner.

We got a couple of great pictures of the six of us before enjoying a nice meal together.  Since my wife and I had gotten up early for our flight and gained two hours in transit, we decided not to make a late night.  So, we drove back to our hotel for some well-needed sleep.

The next day, we came over to our daughter’s house in the morning to go to church with them.  While their oldest son suspected something was up when we walked in the door after church with our luggage, it was not until after lunch, that it was revealed that Mommy and Daddy were going away for two nights, and Mimi and Granddaddy would be staying with them.  As we left to take the boys to a park to take advantage of the unexpected, nice afternoon weather, it was obvious by their smiles that the parents were looking forward to their time away.

The two days they were gone were school days, so our grandparent responsibilities were limited to morning before school, after school and evening tasks such as feeding them, bathing them, and reading to or with them.  Of course, we managed to find time to work on the LEGO sets I had brought, a long-standing, fun activity with Granddaddy. But after we walked the boys to school each morning, my wife and I had most of the day to ourselves.

One day we went shopping together at a close by shopping area.  This is something we have not done together in a long time, and we had a great time.  We also had a nice lunch at an Italian restaurant that just so happened to have an iconic Italian car out front.

Walking back up the hill to get the boys from school, we then had our second evening alone with the boys which went very well.

The next day, my wife and I had a similar time to ourselves in the morning before Mommy and Daddy returned from there outing in the afternoon to greet and enjoy time with everyone.  Before dinner, it was time for my wife and I to take our leave to travel to our hotel by the airport for our next morning flight.  One of the sweetest things was when our grandson said he hoped we missed our flight, so we could stay an extra day.

It was indeed sad to be leaving after a too short visit.

Our travel day home went off flawlessly and we had a new experience.  Our connecting flight into SLC was on the same plane flying to Memphis so there was no fear of missed connections.  And we sat in the very same seats on both flights with an empty seat between us.  What more could you ask for?

     To be continued…