Preparing to Re-enter Society

With the vaccines becoming widely available across the U.S., we have all started to re-enter society. It's a weird feeling, getting anxiety over going places without a mask on, when you lived your first 26 years of life without one. I'm not sure if everything is more crowded, or it just feels that way after being alone for a year.

I have an on/ off switch, no dimmer. It's either total isolation or going cross country, there is no middle ground with me. So, I jumped in head first. I did very little planning and I'm a notoriously awful packer. Luckily for me, I now had my mom coming along for the first half of the trip. She is the opposite of a lot of my personality traits. She is well organized, a planner, and always pays attention to details.

I had the stops I wanted to see, based on a quick google of "Top Places to Visitin in X". There would be 26 stops in total, with my mom leaving at Salt Lake City. Admittedly, she did most of the packing. We prepared what we could, given our car would be sitting in 100 degree heat for most of the trip. I had just finished traveling through North and South Carolina by myself for 4 weeks, so I did know some things we wanted to avoid taking on this trip and some things we definitely needed (but that's for another post). We mapped out the stops and how long it would take to get to each place, since I was having to make the drive after working hours. We were, more or less, ready to go!