Category: Travel

Pre-Paying for Hotel Stays

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So, we have another COVID variant out there. This one seems to be named after a Transformer (I think it’s called Megatron or something). As if I weren’t already reluctant to start planning next year’s travel. Then again, my idea for next year’s travel starts with Flerida, and I seem to recall Flerida being one of the first states to re-open after the initial COVID panic.

When that initial COVID panic hit about a year and a a half ago, I had already booked a trip to Texas for April of that year. I had pre-paid some of the hotels, through Hotwire.com. The way Hotwire worked (at the time, anyway) was that you pre-paid in order to get the lowest prices, and there was no refund if you wanted to cancel. Obviously, when the governments shut down travel, Hotwire had to refund a LOT of pre-paid hotel stays. Combine the sheer volume of people contacting them for refunds with the fact that they weren’t accustomed to giving refunds to begin with, and Hotwire turned into a gigantic rat fuck. To their credit, I got my refunds, but it took several weeks. Since then, I do NOT pre-pay hotels (unless the traditional reservation would be super expensive, or there’s just nothing available). Even once COVID becomes a thing of the past, there’s just too much of a chance that something related to Parkinson’s will pop up and force me to cancel a trip. To me, the small savings is just not worth the gamble.

2022 Travel

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It occurs to me that if this is going to be a Parkinson’s Travel Blog, then I probably ought to start planning some travel. So, here’s my first draft of an extremely tentative schedule for the upcoming year.

February: Central and western Florida (Disney, Busch Gardens, Salvador Dali and Ringling Brothers museums)

April: Texas (Sand Festival, Southwest Railroad Museum, two Six Flags parks)

June: Ohio (Cedar Point & Kings Island) or Canada (Banff and Jasper national parks)

August: Vermont (Cheesemaker’s Festival, multiple museums and hikes)

October: NYC (Open House New York, multiple museums, helicopter tour)

November: Central and eastern North Carolina (Kitty Hawk, historic towns around Albemarle Sound)

In the meantime, I will continue doing Throw-Back Thursdays, where I post about places I visited during my pre-blog years.

Lodging With a Barker

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This past Saturday was Moving Day NC Triangle – an annual Parkinson’s charity fundraising event in Raleigh. As usual, I added another east Carolina activity to make the trip that much more worthwhile. But unlike previous years, I now have Bear. When we’re at home, Bear is a serious barker. Any human or dog that walks by the house gets a good talking-to. But when I take him to dog parks, stores, friends’ homes, etc., he doesn’t have these barking fits. In other words, Bear seems to be barking to defend his “den”. This has led me to wonder…would Bear consider a hotel room to be his den? I certainly can’t take him to a hotel or an RV park if he’s going to launch into a tirade every time some one walks by. So for this trip, I went the Airbnb route, and found us a cottage in Carolina Beach.

On the night we arrived, Bear seemed quite agitated and confused. In fact, I may have gotten more sleep than he did overnight, as he was still fidgeting and whimpering as I fell asleep. I slept better than expected, but still woke up at 3 AM after five hours of sleep. I turned on the TV and started watching nature shows, and eventually got a little more sleep on the couch (and more importantly, came to realize that sometimes when I feel half asleep, I’m actually asleep). By 8:30 AM, Bear was looking out the front window, barking at passersby as if he owned the place. So, yeah. No hotels for Bear.

Gatlinburg, Day 2 (evening)

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Thanks to the weather (overcast with occasional light rain), I really didn’t have to worry about staying cool. I took my extra Levodopa and I did a good job of staying hydrated and appropriately fed. But today, it wasn’t quite enough. I felt exhausted for most of the day. Around 3:00, I finally decided to go out to my car and take a nap. But when I got to the car, I felt like I really needed to just go back to the hotel and call it a day. I had spent about four hours in the park, and rode everything I really wanted to ride, so it wasn’t a bad day. Lightning Rod absolutely lived up to my expectations – it’s like riding a jack rabbit that’s high on angel dust. EXACTLY like that. Trust me, I know.

Gatlinburg, Day 2 (morning)

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Today is my roller coaster day! I will be visiting Dollywood, primarily to try out the amazing-looking roller coaster known as Lightning Rod. This will be my third visit to Dollywood, which is a beautiful park with a surprisingly excellent selection of coasters.

Dollywood has also played an important role in my figuring out how to continue enjoying amusement parks as my age and my Parkinson’s continue to advance. I’m not full-on diabetic, but I have occasionally experienced what appeared to be low blood sugar episodes. During my first visit to Dollywood (which was before my Parkinson’s diagnosis), I learned the importance of staying “sugared”. After just a few rides, I found myself feeling quite woozy and sick to my (empty) stomach. But after a quick lunch, I felt great! For a while. Then I started feeling dizzy and weak. But after drinking enough water to fill Dolly’s bra (and she didn’t make it easy), I felt great again! My next visit to Dollywood (maybe 4 years ago?) was the first time I tried taking “extra” Carbidopa-Levodopa pills – three pills with each dose that day, rather than my normal two pills – again with excellent results. (This was OK’d by my Parkinson’s doctor, by the way.) Finally, it was three years ago at Silver Dollar City (Dollywood’s former sister park) when I first recognized my propensity to overheat, and quickly found out how easily it could be remedied. So as long as I stay hydrated, sugared, Levodoped-up, and cool, it should be a good day.