‘Vacation shamers’ on a moral crusade

Those sandy toes stretching out to aTua blue water" The Maine lobster roll" Mouse ears in front Cinderella’s Castle"

It’s August, people Where are all the travel pi["

Oh, wait. We’re in a pandemic. And a recession. So no one’s traveling, everyone’s locked down and making bread still, right"

1ot really, though. /ast Thursday, 1, 21 of y’all passed through airport security checkpoints in America. Sure, it’s about a third of the travelers who got patted down on the same day last year, but it’s far above the

,5 4 passengers who took off on April 14, when pandemic restrictions were new.

And nearly million Americans road-tripped it, according to AAA’s numbers.

One company said R9 rentals are nearly double what they were last year.

³I’ve even refrained from posting on my personal social media page,´ said /ungi Moore, a Michigan mom whose Instagram is usually all about her family’s farflung travel adventures.

And who could blame her" Because the pandemic means vacation shaming has hit a new level. ³(nMoy your virus.´ ³I thought there was travel ban.´

³+ow incredibly irresponsible,´ a reader told me after I wrote about the road trip my son and I recently took to Massachusetts to scout out colleges. ³Stay home. Be well. Make sacrifices in line with the global emergency that e[ists.

(ven before the pandemic, vacation shaming has always been a thing – but mostly relegated to the workplace in our work-addicted nation. Americans don’t come close to getting (urope’s government-mandated four weeks of paid vacation. We even managed to work during million of the paid vacation days we were owed in 2 1 , according to a study by the U.S. Travel Association. We’re simply not good at checking out and turning off because studies show that we get a cruise ship load of crap when we do.

But in the novel coronavirus era, vacation shaming stopped being merely about workplace pressure or our friends’ slow-burn Mealousy. 1ow it’s a moral crusade.

³We now have enough data to feel pretty confident that 1ew

*enetic data showed that 1ew

of

a

Since then, many states adopted restrictions and mandated testing. My son and I left Massachusetts right before it enacted a travel order fining any out-of-staters

5 a day if they didn’t do a 14-day Tuarantine or produce a negative test.

But isn’t there a way to travel safely" +ow are the hundreds of thousands of people who are traveling doing it"

³We utili]e Door Dash and eat at the Airbnb, buy all our groceries for the road so there’s only stops for restrooms and leg stretching. Masks, face shields, hand saniti]ers,´ said Moore, the Michigan mom who posts on Instagram but has gone stealth on her personal pages. Right now, they’re hiking in 1evada – but she felt some travel shaming when she had asked online for advice about rest stops. ³All our activities are national parks or outdoors. We had one hotel stay and that was a contactless check-in.´

Amy Wolfe has been Must as careful, but she had to block social media travel shamers who guilted her and her husband when they posted about their forays through ancient ruins and seaside resorts in Turkey, one of the few nations in the world allowing Americans to visit right now.

³Mark was determined to get me away from work and Turkey was one of a couple choices,´ said Wolfe, artistic director and C(O of the Manassas Ballet Theater.

She and her vacation-planner-in-chief husband Mark Wolfe, a Manassas City Council member, are unabashed in their vacation travels – posting photos from Istanbul to Bodrum, even though ³yes, some people are giving us a hard time about it,´ she said, and even though her husband is running for reelection.

³We are trying to be very careful and stay pretty much to ourselves,´ she said. ³But we both believe in living life each and every day.´

I was thrilled for them when I saw their photos by the sea. The first time I met the couple was on the beach in 9irginia, when they met one of the Marines who was with their son when he was killed in IraT in 2 , after their vehicle was blown up. Seeing them smile on the Turkish vacation told me they are taking care of their mental health – something that’s also important during this trying time.

³I will add that the people we’ve spoken to here are totally pu]]led by the American response to >the virus@,´ Mark Wolfe said in a te[t interview. ³They take >the virus@ much more seriously here. We’ve had thermal body scanners, mask reTuirements and even standardi]ed breakfast food trays to minimi]e contact.´

And that makes it really weird when they talk to folks back in 9irginia who are treating them like they’re visiting a hot ]one.

³So when people ask if we are going to Tuarantine ourselves when we get back,´ Amy Wolfe said, ³I feel it should be them that we want to stay away from.´