Hello everyone, and welcome to my third blog post! This one I am especially excited for all to read because I am announcing my first ever blog series! This new blog series is called Party in the USA and it will span over the next three weeks of my blog covering the super amazing three week trip that the boys and I just got back from. 

This first blog will go over some of the planning aspects within the whole three week trip. The next three weeks will have individualized itineraries for each location that will provide specific details which include how we transported, where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate. Hopefully after this blog series you will have some helpful tips and tricks on how to help you travel and you can start building your own perfect itinerary.

Before COVID-19 hit the world, my fiancé, best friend, and I were planning on going to Europe for two months. However, due to COVID-19, all international travel was put on hold with a travel ban so we unfortunately cancelled all of our itinerary plans. We made the decision to cancel our Europe plans back in May, however since I was still graduating this year, had the funds located, and had the time off we still wanted to keep our options open to some other level of travel. Every month we continuously checked different travel options, laws, and regulations to gather as much information and updates as possible. It wasn’t until July 1st that we all came to a conclusion that we were going to set forth in traveling throughout parts of the United States. This decision came with a lot of discussion between the group about what felt right morally, politically, and emotionally. I urge everyone reading this blog post to take my advice with a grain of salt, and only partake in activities and travel that feels safe, comfortable, and fun. I am in no way advising anyone to put themselves in dangerous situations that could potentially place themselves or others health at risk. Only you truly know what feels comfortable to you, so have a honest conversation with yourself and the people you are traveling with about the expectations you have for the trip. In all of our travels we social-distanced when possible, kept our masks on at all times, washed hands, and practiced as much protocol as possible. 

By July 1st a lot of the travel and leisure laws had been uplifted and a lot of states started to advertise for travel again. We decided we wanted to still try and experience anything that we could so we set forth in planning an itinerary. When we first started planning we wanted to make sure we visited places that really attracted the group. We all sat down and wrote ideas of where we wanted to go, and started doing research about whether those places where open for travel. Pro Tip: Make sure you do a lot of research about the specific places you will be traveling, each state and county laws can change daily so make sure you check out their local government websites, the cities social media’s page, and call their local airport to see how their security is dealing with COVID. If you don’t check on this information you can end up flying to a city that has a mandatory two week quarantine and you can get stuck in the city at your own expense. After multiple days of brainstorming and checking local governments we distinguished a list of all the places we wanted to visit, which included SoCal, Denver, and Seattle. 

Now that we had the three locations that everyone wanted to travel to I now had the information I needed to create three fun and unique itineraries. Below I am going to link some basic traveling tips that I accumulated while booking and traveling that can help you on your journey:

-To keep all of my travel organized I made sure I had specific areas where I kept all of my confirmation emails, itineraries, and plans. I also kept itinerary plans that were shared with everyone in my group that included notes, calendars, and photo albums. STAY ORGANIZED because nothing is worse than getting to your destination and your plans falling through at the last minute. 

-We decided that to get through SoCal and Seattle the safest way to travel was by road trip. However make sure that you watch the mileage that it can put on your car, so we decided to rent a car for one of the parts of our trip. In case you didn’t know renting a car can be extremely expensive so I started thinking of other ways we could book a car. At the time I actually had to get work done on my car, so after calling my car insurance they agreed to give me a rental at a lower price. Car rental places give incredibly low discounts to car insurance companies. So fortunately enough I was able to pay a very low price to take a brand new car down to SoCal without having to watch my mileage so see if this option can work for you.

-For Denver however we flew and actually the airport experience overall went really awesome. One tip to remember is from the time you get out of your car at the airport till the time you get dropped off by your Uber at your new destination you must keep a mask on AT ALL TIMES. I kept a silk scarf in my bag so that I could switch from my regular mask to a looser mask on the airplane and this was super comfortable. On the airplane they did not seat people every two-people parties next to each other so you actually never sat right next to a stranger which was really nice and there was extra space for things like your personal items. However, expect to bring all of your own snacks and water since flight attendant services were very limited. Temperatures were taken before all security checkpoints and before boarding every flight. Overall our airport experience was clean, safe, and honestly really organized.

-Since we were booking everything super last minute we ended up getting some really awesome deals when booking all around. We booked through sites like hotels.com, Airbnb, Hopper, and Expedia. When booking right now expect to see a very large cleaning fee applied to all reservations and plan your budget accordingly, since all locations are now extra sanitizing and cleaning for COVID-19. These cleaning fees ranged from $200-400 per location, so when traveling try to stay in a location as long as possible so you don’t have to pay this fee multiple times. These extra cleaning fees were extremely appreciated and I had great peace of mind knowing that I was staying in safe and clean accommodations. 

-Expect all stores, restaurant, and activities to be altered due to the pandemic! There was quite a few times where Google would state a business was open but once we arrived it was actually closed. Be ready to make multiple changes to your itinerary, have backup options, and don’t get your heart set on one activity or experience. Just enjoy wherever the ride takes you! Everything and everyone is doing their best right now so don’t get upset when something isn’t available, closed, running slow, or they cant accommodate you. 

-And on that same note, TIP. YOUR. CUSTOMER SERVICE WORKERS. AND. BE. NICE! It is scary enough that customer service people have to put themselves at risk everyday to provide you the service you want, and the last thing they need is to deal with rude people and bad tips. Expect and plan into your budget to tip 20-25% to all customer service workers which include but is not limited to Servers, Bartenders, Ubers, hotel room attendants, and Nail salon workers to name a few. 

-Know that at all times you will NEED to wear a face covering, so make sure you travel with multiple masks in case you loose one or your mask breaks. Do not get upset with employees if they have to tell you to put a mask on when that is purely their job. 

-Overall I would say go into all of your traveling experiences with an open mind and to never have any expectations. It’s all about the journey and not the destination so try to just have as much fun as you can while being safe. 

After all of our planning we had three official itineraries that I was very excited about. The first trip was a ten day road trip that started from the Bay Area traveled down to SoCal, went over to Arizona, up to Las Vegas, and then we drove back home. The second trip we flew and hung out in Denver Colorado, for five days. Lastly, we went on a second road trip up for eight days through Portland Oregon, to Seattle Washington, and back home again. We had such an incredible time adventuring throughout these states and honestly we were able to see such amazing things and had fantastic experiences despite some of the adjustments that we had to make. I am so excited to see you guys back here next week in part two of the Party in the USA blog series where we will talk in detail about planning the perfect road trip to LA and everything you need to know.

I truly feel like traveling is one of the most influential, eye-opening, and thought provoking experiences I have accomplished in my twenty-somethings and it doesn’t matter if it’s traveling twenty minutes away to a park or twenty hours away to a foreign country I extremely encourage any and all to get out there and experience something new! Find some place that calls to your inner spirit, get yourself there, and chase those moments. Next week, get ready for our road trip to LA. 

Cheers to our Twenty-Somethings. 

Rayna 

Comment below any of your favorite places you’ve been to during quarantine!