Carrying on the recap of how S and I have spent the last several years, here we go with...
2020
Bahamas Cruise and Kennedy Space Center - COVID wasn't a thing yet, at least in this part of the world, when S and I joined K and J down in Florida for a long cruise weekend. I had, some time prior, sent my passport in for renewal. S got his back in a couple of weeks, but mine was delayed. I am a shady character, after all.... Luckily, because the Bahamas is U.S.A.-lite, you can take a cruise there with just a birth certificate and driver's license (and in my case, a marriage license). We had, as we usually do, a great time with K and J! We kicked butt at trivia and did our best to clean out the bar; we can't let those unlimited drinks packages go to waste, after all! Much pizza was consumed, we escaped from the escape room, we spent half a day in Nassau and J's birthday doing all the water slides at Coco Cay.
Back on land, we ended our whirlwind weekend with a trip to Kennedy Space Center. As seems to be the trend with every museum we visit, it is a place we could have spent some more time!
Colorado - it has been my tradition for some years - even before S was around, and definitely now that he's nearly as good a skier as I am - to head out to Colorado for the annual ski adventure. It was on that trip that I bought the skis I still ski on each year, my Blizzard Black Pearls. We didn't know it at the time, but that trip would be the last time we were on an airplane in an age.
Because then, COVID happened.
Remember how weird it was when no one knew what was happening? And we never went anywhere? Even going to the grocery store was a fraught experience. Most of the rest of the year, we stayed home, as did many people. We were both working from home, feeling very lucky to have flexible jobs and loads of outdoor space where we could get fresh air, work out, and generally not feel like we were trapped. We pulled out lots of honeysuckle from our woods, spent time in the gardens, began the still-ongoing master bathroom renovation, spent lots of time cleaning and organizing the basement, and finally had time to do lots and lots of cooking.
We were not without some high-way bound adventures, though:
Shackteau - K and J have a cabin a few hours from where we live. In June or July of 2020, they made the long trip up from Florida, Dad and D made the equally long drive in from Colorado, and we made the relatively short hop from our house to spend a week or so together. As anyone who's ever been there knows, a trip to the Shackteau is also a project list. The big one we ticked off during that visit was building a fire pit. It's a 16' x 16' square in the yard, the hillside held back with a few railroad ties. The ground is covered in gravel, and in the middle we built a fire ring out of landscaping bricks.
We enjoyed a lovely tour of the county, including the local cult, and spent a day on a boat at Mark Twain Lake. All in all, it was a lovely time and a really nice way to see everyone when no one was flying.
Ozarks - S has an aunt and uncle who have, for ages, had a second home down at the Lake of the Ozarks. In the late 20-teens, they upgraded to a bigger place, planning to ultimately sell their home in St. Louis when they retired and move down to the lake full time (which has now happened). In the heat of summer in St. Louis, it's a nice place to escape to, which we did.
Colorado and Phoenix - as fall rolled towards winter in 2020, another round of COVID was rearing its ugly head. We had been in St. Louis for longer at a stretch than we typically were, and we were getting a bit itchy to travel. So we packed up our campervan and headed back to Colorado, stopping along the way at the Cosmpsphere and Strataca, both in Hutchinson, Kansas. Once we arrived, we spent two weeks with Dad and D. From there, we dropped down towards Phoenix, meeting up with T and L, S's dad and step-mom, along the way. We then spent three weeks with them in Phoenix before making the long trek home, which were punctuated by stops at Petrified Forest National Park and the odd but fascinating Woolaroc Museum and Wildlife Preserve, outside Bartlesville, OK.
