All the ways COVID can mess up a vacation

I’ve been less stressed out about COVID messing up our summer since we got it in mid-May (though BA.4 and BA.5’s dominance has chipped away at my confidence recently), so I was kind of taken off guard when my uncle (whose house we were staying at) called me, during our layover in Denver, to tell me that he had just tested positive for COVID.

I spent the rest of the layover trying to figure out where we should stay. Luckily another aunt is out of town this week and we can stay at her house until we go to the farm. So the kids and I pulled up at midnight on Tuesday and figured out how to stay at my aunt’s house, which was not at all set up for our arrival.

{I’m still not sure where we should stay after the farm. It will have been 7 days since my uncle tested positive.}

It’s been a lot, and I am tired. But we had a great first day hanging out with cousins at the zoo. The St. Louis Zoo is amazing, and FREE and the only thing that keeps me away is the humidity and heat.

The new interactive primate enclosure
Petting sting rays
So much fun!

Today we’re swimming. And my husband gets in. Tomorrow we’ll be cleaning up my aunt’s house and getting ready to drive to the farm on Saturday morning. Hopefully we’ll hit up a museum too because 96* is too hot for my SF kids to be outside for very long.

12 Comments

  1. You take and share SUCH COOL PICTURES!!!! Thank you for taking us along. Glad I only doing that heat and humidity vicariously.
    Good your uncle could reach you and you found a solution so you did not arrive with no plan in middle of night with two tired kids. You are fast at finding alternatives and I hope the change plans comes together smoothly AND NO ONE ELSE GETS SICK!!!
    Best wishes to your uncle for his recovery being fast and complete.

    1. Well I’m luck that I have a lot of aunts and uncles and even more cousins in this area. That really helps.

  2. I think 96 degrees is too hot for ANYONE to be outside for very long!

    Hopefully some great memories despite the COVID-related setback!!!

    1. Oh for sure. Especially with how humid it can be here. But my kids really seem to melt fast. My husband too. 😉

  3. I live in the St Louis area and it gets hot and humid in the summer. The Science Center is nice, you have to pay to park. Some of the attractions inside have a fee but you can enter for free.

    Made for Kids, a satellite location of the Magic House is nice. It is smaller but has a lot of activities for kids, only $5 per person to enter.

    There are also a lot of free splash pads in the area, we try to visit as many as we can during the summer.

    Hope you enjoy your time in St Louis!

    1. We’ve visited St. Louis every summer of my life (except for 2020 of course) so I’m well aware of how hot and humid it gets. I can handle it fairly well but my family was so. I think we’re actually going to hit up Meramec Caverns tomorrow. My kids have never been and I haven’t been since I was a kid myself.

  4. Wow. Good luck with your accommodations. I’m glad you still got to go. We just had COVID mess up our vacation in a way I hadn’t imagined as well. I had thought about us all having to skip it if we got COVID, but I didn’t think of only one person missing it. My husband had a work conference in Las Vegas the 4 days before a trip to SC with my son’s baseball team. He came back at 6:30 PM on Thursday thinking he was just tired, but then woke up at 2:00 AM on Friday with chills, a fever, and a sore throat. We had to decide at 4:30 AM that my son and I would drive to SC (from WI) without him. Our son hadn’t interacted with him when he returned the night before, and I had just had COVID a couple weeks earlier, so we left at 5:00 AM without him. The trip was not what we planned, but I didn’t want my son to miss his baseball tournament. It was rough.

    1. Yeah. I haven’t considered what our game plan will be if only one of us gets it. We should probably figure that out ahead of time for our next trip.

  5. When you all just had COVID very recently, and if your uncle is testing negative after day 5, are you still concerned about staying there on day 7?

    Love that zoo! Looks like a blast with the kids.

    1. If he has tested negative I’ll have no problem. But I didn’t test negative until day 9 and my husband didn’t until day 11.

  6. We just had to cancel our long awaited trip to Iceland when my husband got covid the day before our trip. It’s so frustrating and makes me wonder if being less cautious and getting it earlier during the school year would have been better. Sigh. We’re very disappointed and you can’t just reschedule a trip like that.

    1. Oh I’m so sorry. I feel like it will be a miracle if our London trip happens. It must be so disappointing to miss out on something you’ve been waiting for for so long.

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