COVID, cruising and the rural life

After all this time I thought COVID-19 was a thing of the past.

The worst of it was behind us two years ago. Yet here I am, battling it for the second time. This time is much worse than the first. As of this writing I am on my fourth day since being diagnosed. I’m feeling better but am still drained of energy. My wife and I came down with it last week after returning from an Alaskan cruise. Fortunately, the rest of the family hasn’t caught it.

Apparently it’s not unusual to come down with something after spending a week on a ship with 4,500 of your newest, closest friends. We sailed on the Norwegian Encore from July 16-23 as guests of Sandy’s parents. In honor of a milestone birthday, my mother-in-law wanted to have a family cruise, including the children, spouses, and grandchildren – 13 of us in all. More about that in a minute.

First, I’d like to catch up my readers on what’s happened since I left the Wharton Journal-Spectator and the East Bernard Express a month ago. We moved to a very rural home on 2.76 acres in Bryan, roughly 10 miles from downtown College Station. It’s paradise here at this place we call Southern Acre Wood (think Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood) – except for the gravel mine we didn’t know about down the road and around the corner from us and the constant, barrage of trucks that rumble down our dirt road six days a week from 7:30 a.m. to about 4 p.m. (sometimes as late as 9:30 p.m.), caking us in dust.

Most of our stuff is still stored on the front porch and in storage sheds since our plan was to replace the ratty carpet with new vinyl flooring. We did not anticipate that the big box store we purchased it from would take a month to deliver the flooring and that it will take yet another week before the installers get here.

In the meantime, Sandy and I were amazed to browse on Facebook and see so many of our friends posting pictures from Alaska. I guess Alaska is the place to go for vacation. We didn’t know that a year ago when our trip was planned, but it’s true. Even the nurse who administered my COVID test had done an identical Alaskan cruise on a different cruise line just the week before us. We even did the same excursion!

For our adventure we set sail from Seattle and made stops in Juneau, Glacier Bay, Skagway, Ketchikan, and Victoria, British Columbia, before returning to Seattle. Each stop in Alaska was more amazing than the day before. The high temperature was usually in the upper 50s, but it felt comfortable, even for someone like me who hates the cold. I also couldn’t help but notice how much Alaskans enjoy poking fun at Texans about how big things really are.

Photographs can’t begin to show the shear beauty and magnificence of the mountains and seascapes there. During our trip we saw lots of bald eagles, sea otters, seals, sealions, whales, and even a brown bear. We were standing on a raised boardwalk when the bear meandered down the stream and crossed under our feet to the meadow on the other side. It was an incredible encounter!

We saw lots of totem poles and one being made. Some of our family experienced a lumberjack show, some went to salmon bakes, others did different excursion experiences.

Returning from the trip was a disappointment beyond the normal letdown at the end of an exciting adventure. We were to have taken a train to Portland from Seattle, but a derailment the night before turned it into a bus ride. Portland was filthy, covered in graffiti, and overrun with homeless people. We flew home from Portland to a number of problems, including a damaged kitchen floor where the newly installed waterline to the fridge had been leaking.

Through it all, the COVID has been the worst part of it. According to my nurse friend, it is something that will not go away and will become another disease to cope with like a cold or flu. (Please, no political comments, that’s not what this is about.) Ordinarily, I would have ignored that information as something irrelevant to me. Now it has my utmost attention. It’s not a thing of the past but a reality we have to live with for now.