Mesa Verde, One Mile at a Time

We took the annual May trip this year. Last year it was Vancouver, by flying. This year we stayed in the state of Colorado, barely, and drove. Basically, we drove from the upper Northeast corner to the Southwest corner. Google Maps had the trip at 8 hours, the reality was it turned out to be more like 11 hours. There is no good way to get around Denver.

I even hate getting to the airport and that’s out east of the city. Sometimes it makes more sense to use the bypass, but then you get stuck in construction south of Denver. Plus it ends up being a more roundabout path to the mountains.

Once past Denver and motoring up through the foothills and the mountains, the traffic all but disappears. Not an hour too soon.

Road trips have always been fun, but as I the years have gotten on, I love to make more stops. Powering through the breaks to get to the destination doesn’t hold a lot of water with me. It’s nicer to stop and see what else is along the way.

It’s good to stop, it makes sense. Not much is as senseless as sitting in a vehicle to get somewhere while sitting the whole time. If I could, I would rather bike somewhere. But, since I don’t have unlimited time off, planes, trains, and automobiles it is.

Where was I going? Oh yeah, roadtrippin’. This is a summer of road trips, like the year before and the year before. Let’s face it. Plane travel sucks. I fly because it saves time. More time to explore a place. But I feel anything under a day of driving isn’t worth getting on a plane. Even the most basic plane trip from the house is going to be three hours just getting to the airport and onto a flight. A day on the road is as long as a short flight. If it’s over a day of driving, it starts to be worth it.

That being said, air travel is still a shitshow. Airlines are overbooking flights, making the seats smaller, and hitting folks with more fees. It might be best to avoid airports this summer, and for any desitination more than two days drive away. This after I went through the bother of getting TSA Pre-check. It still made going to Maui easier.

Roadtrippin’ summer takes a lot of the bite out of high airline prices and the hassle of airports. I’m all about ending hassles. The last three years have been a hassle. Most of it was out of our hands, but some of it was our fault. We are still dealing with the pent-up rage of lockdowns, the feelings of missed milestones, and the loss of connection that we had with others.

I’m not going to lie, there is a part of me that feels that I have missed out on the last three years. Well, at least I feel better that we all missed out. We got older, a lot older in years for some of us. I’ve been well-off, I kept working, stayed fit and even seemed to progress and moved into a house. But I have other friends and people I know who didn’t do well. Three years packed a lot of punch, maybe a decade of stress and aging on some of them. It has been rough.

And now folks are raging to get out to travel. The whole industry knows it. But they don’t seem to have any willingness to fix the problem. That would mean spending money on more employees, service upgrades, and airport improvements. But let’s be honest, they are making some good profits right now. And yes the costs have risen. Airlines are trying to keep fares low by killing service and legroom. If we as travelers want low fares then we can expect bad service. Maybe it is time to admit that the era of the $100 round-trip flight with checked luggage is long gone.

For now, let’s stick to the road trip. It will be better for our mental health.