We travel exclusively this way, and have done so for decades. In the past* several years, the majority of private RV parks have acquired large groups of permanent residents. I’m guessing that most of those parks will survive since they’re not entirely dependent on travelers, and we can resume our trips once restrictions are lifted. State and national parks will obviously still be around since they aren’t dependent on profit.
Most parks have fairly generous cancellation policies, with KOA (national chain) being among the best. Even if you can’t cancel, you’re out only 50 bucks or so per night.
*I’m not sure when this started becoming more common, but it seems to be post-2008 recession. I suspect this is related to the increases in housing expenses and nomadic lifestyles.
My Wife and I had a trip planned to Key West at the end of this month. Our airline flights where easy to cancel. American just said the ticket is safe to use when ever. Well, the money we spent on it, we can just re-book. United just refunded all of our money. It was surprisingly easy to do. I thought I was gonna have to jump though hoops. So kudos to them.
I would think you don’t even need hotel reservations for the rest of the year, as occupancy rates will be nil and you can probably just drop in and find a room. If they are even open.
Yeah you’re right. I just looked at a couple of our favorites from recent trips and they were open (though no visitor center etc) but most of the big names are closed. Those were favorites (TR Roosevelt, Great Basin) in part because not a lot of people go to them, which is probably why they aren’t closed.
We were also at Zion last year, magnificent but big crowds so unless those crowds have trailed off drastically it seems like it probably should be closed.
We have plans for Yellowstone in early September, including reservations in the park’s lodges. That might not happen. YNP is completely closed now. I’m keeping an eye on the upcoming reservation cancellation deadlines, still many weeks away.
We were supposed to go to Ann Arbor in mid-July for a family thing, and I have no idea whether that’s going to happen. Luckily no real planning is involved - we’re close enough to drive and we would be staying with family.
A few weeks ago, when Italy was heating up, my oldest childhood friend called for advice - her son is graduating college this year, and the plan was for a family trip to celebrate - an Italian cruise :eek: She had already put the kibosh on that plan, and the cruise line was being completely inflexible and refused to refund her $1100 deposit. She had already bought the plane tickets, and at that point she was debating whether to cancel the flights right away, wait and see, or keep the flights and just book another flight onward somewhere from Italy that might be less impacted. At the time, she decided to keep the flight reservations and wait and see what happened, on the theory that she wasn’t going to lose any more than she already had by waiting to cancel.
You don’t want to travel CA-1 in an RV unless you are really comfortable driving it, particularly the section between Point Reyes and Sausalito, and south of Carmel to Ragged Point. A fun and scenic drive in a convertible but hours of steering-wheel-gripping terror in a big box with no feedback and inadequate power.
We normally buy our Sint Maarten/St Martin plane tickets for next January in April. I don’t know. I haven’t missed a year in the last 15, my gf in the last 20. We even went right after Irma just to pitch in with the rebuilding. But I don’t know. I might be dealing with the closure of my business and figuring out the future.
Yeah it did originally say Pacific Coast Highway/CA-1. I know in a Ford Expedition EL as driver for 6 other people the scenery was great but the driving not fun, after awhile ‘when is this road gonna straighten out a little, please’. In a BMW M2 it was ‘crap, this road is straightening out already!’ :). I agree I wouldn’t want to drive it in a big RV.
There will be hotels and airlines when things clear up. A lot of them might be under new management, but where there is demand, the supply will be provided.
I’m supposed to be going to a gaming convention in Columbus, Ohio in mid-June. While it hasn’t been cancelled yet, it seems likely that it will be in the near future; the convention center where it’s held may soon be refit to serve as an emergency hospital space. So, I’m pretty darn sure that that trip won’t be happening.
I also have an annual get-together with several of my old gaming friends up in the Wisconsin Dells in late October – we rent a big condo at one of the resorts, and play role-playing games together over a long weekend. We’re hopeful that, by then, such a trip will be feasible, but we already recognize that it might not happen.
My wife and I made plans last year for a trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton this September. Last week I contacted all of our hotels, all plan on being open and operating in September. All but one gave me the option of canceling now. We are still planning on going as of now.
We normally have at least 3 or 4 holidays booked in advance. As I type we were due to be on a flight en-route to Auckland. That’s all fallen through and we’ve got refunds on all cars and accommodation and just waiting for the flight refunds. We had a weekend booked in Germany for early May and Norway for late May, we expect to have those cancelled for sure. Our summer holiday to Austria in August is probably going to be cancelled and we’ve stopped making any plans for a potential Scotland trip in October.
We go skiing for xmas and new year in Austria as well and as it stands we have not booked anything for that but realistically we are looking at that being the next major overseas trip that has a realistic chance of taking place.
I think the OP’s plans are optimistic but if you can get them booked with the ability to cancel then where’s the harm? However, be ultra cautious because I’m sure cancellation and insurance exceptions will be re-drafted on anything you book now and expect to see plenty of liquidations and closures.
Not to pick on you specifically, but there seems to be a pretty large blindspot in general about how this is going to affect the United States economically and socially for years to come. Even if someone came up with a magic potion today that made the SARS-CoV-2 virus spontaneously disappear from every infected person, we’re going to see massive economic shockwaves going through the global economy, especially because nothing effective is being done to ‘freeze’ or protect the economy save for that US$2T stimulus package (which is a drop in the bucket) and to ensure that the vultures don’t descend upon the resulting mess and start picking the bones they way some (coughSteve Mnuchincough) did post-2008.
Not to dim the o.p.'s interest in taking a road trip, but I wouldn’t make any long term plans right now or put any amount of money down in a deposit that one can’t afford to lose.
The others were all going to be planned last minute anyway so who cares.