School's out forever, crooned Alice Cooper as he memorably predicted the Covid-19 pandemic. After several weeks of freezes, IT problems, and goodness knows other catastrophes, this week was actually an official break for Pete's 2nd Grade class. And while we thought about heading to Miami, we concluded it was more sensible to stick closer to home.
So we skipped the state border and found ourselves in Louisiana, somewhere we went at New Year. These days I pick holiday destinations by mentioning places to American friends and if they say "who would vacation there?" I immediately book. This trick worked again as we found ourselves virtually the only people in the beautiful state park of Lake Claiborne.
As I've mentioned previously, I'm of an age where I believe I've camped enough. Or maybe I've just moved the goalposts of "camping" to include cabins with their own toilets, kitchens, telly and wi-fi. Either way, roughing it isn't half as rough as it once was, and I'm thankful for that. We spent a lovely week hiking, kayaking, building fires...and being able to shower privately afterwards. It's the little things.
Of course it was all over too quickly, and we were soon heading back from the empty wilds to our city of 5.5 million. It's so much easier to socially distance when you're sharing a square mile with only a couple of armadillos and a possum.
