For example, in the middle of the August getaway for most of Americans who can afford to take time away from jobs and spend money they may actually have, the impending havoc of Hurricane Irene is sending most of the North Carolina seaboard-based residents and tourists into an evacuation caravan. Just how I’d want to spend my vacation! Packed in a car on a road with thousands of other scurrying souls sharing the roadways. What fun! Especially if one has bored and restless children bouncing around in the back seats.
And then there are the vacationing crowds further north in the New York and Boston areas. And that means the Cape and all of the little islands such as Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard nearby. Everyone in the eastern part of the U.S. knows that the time to be at the beaches is now. So, of course, a Hurricane has to ruin the fun and what was once a delightful plan to enjoy the little cottage on the lake or beach becomes a question of survival – and do we go home before Irene hits the fan or stick it out just in case the hype from 24/7 coverage of the impending landfall of the wet and wild Hurricane turns out to be overblown?
From the live coverage I’m watching of the ocean by Cape Hatteras in N.C. right now, it’s beginning to look a lot like storm-time…although the ultimate smack-down is not expected until tomorrow morning. No one is 100% sure, though, despite all of the storm mapping. Hurricanes have minds of their own and could zig-zag up the coast in the most erratic of ways.
That’s the problem about weather. It’s unpredictable. One makes vacation plans to places where they assume all will be well until a volcano erupts, an earthquake hiccups, a hurricane screams by, lifting rooftops and leaving residents stranded in the middle of a new lake that was once their neighborhood.
But then, the other side of the vacation debate is that if one lives in an area at the center of whatever the current chaos may be, and had gone away on vacation, one wouldn’t be in the mess and would, presumably, be swimming somewhere in Mexico or Belize, or traipsing the trails of Sherwood Forrest. But then again, wouldn’t part of the vacation be filled with anxiety over whether or not one would have a home to go back to?
Nope. There’s no winning with Mother Nature, vacations or not. It just makes it worse for those who planned well in advance for a break from stress and the thrill of discovering a new culture or continuing a yearly ritual of going off to one’s “summer home.”
Between the horrific lines at airport check-ins; train and plane delays due to bad weather or an earthquake, I no longer count myself as part of the vacation crowd. Had I been in London recently I would have found myself in the midst of a riot. Had I gone to New York to soak in a little culture, I might have ended-up soaked in general by the rain.
Who knows? It’s always a risk to leave one’s comfort zone, and I certainly wouldn’t suggest that everyone just cease to take vacations…. I just think that as time goes on the stress level involved with travel and the growing uncertainty of weather patterns makes what was once a time of pleasure a time of pressure.
All those on the east coast, hang on to your cats! Your dogs will always find their own way home.
Image via AP
I pray for the folks on the east coast. Years ago, I drove an 18 wheeler. I was tasked to deliver drinking water and supplies to New Orleans after Catrina hit. I swear, it's one thing to see it on the news every night, as we all did. But NOTHING brings it home like driving in and seeing the devastation first hand. God speed east coasters!!
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