It all started with a text message a week ago: “We had to send Dad to the hospital.” The note came from my sister, who has spent the past few weeks caring full-time for my mother while she undergoes cancer chemotherapy. It took only a moment for Virginia and I to decide that we should travel to my parents’ home in St. Louis, hoping that we could provide some relief with caregiving, cooking, cleaning, and shopping.

We had just returned from St. Louis eight days earlier, a similar medically-inspired mission but with a completely different travel style. On that trip, we navigated two airports, boarded three airplanes, rented a car, stayed at a hotel, ate at restaurants, and freely walked through the hallways of my parents’ apartment complex. The U.S. has changed a lot in the short time since that trip. My father’s emergency would normally prompt me to book the next flight to St. Louis, but airports/airplanes/hotels would expose us to far too many people who might – knowingly or unknowingly – be infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. How could we visit a hospital or my parents’ retirement community after a trip like that?

That’s what prompted our decision to pack up our motorhome and head west, a two-day road trip to St. Louis. By stopping only at gas stations, rest areas, and spacious RV parks, we avoided crowds and nearly all human contact. We had enough food with us to cook all our meals, though we did take advantage of a drive-through Starbucks and an Uber Eats delivery from a restaurant. We even brought our bicycles so that we could get some fresh air and exercise on the Katy Trail, a rails-to-trails conversion that runs next to where we are staying in St. Charles. It’s been 12 years since we rode the Katy Trail, and we got lucky with some warm weather, giving us a chance to ride about 50 miles along the bottomlands of the Missouri River.

All of this made me realize that in this strange period of isolation, RVers have a special advantage. They can still travel and stay in their own tiny house-on-wheels, fulfilling the stay-at-home restrictions without remaining in one location. Many (like us) will be able to do the same sort of remote work that they would do at their house: we have our laptop computers, secure wireless internet access, and an onboard printer/scanner/copier. I even held a virtual lab group meeting on Friday afternoon, though that ended up being a science-tilted TGIF with everyone’s favorite drink in hand. Others might use the opportunity to travel to more remote areas where isolation does not have to mean seclusion. Enjoying outdoor activities – as long as you are not in a group – is an opportunity to maintain physical and mental health during this stressful time of a modern plague provoking fear and widespread anxiety.

The irony of our trip to Missouri was the announcement – while we were driving there – of a lockdown of St. Louis County that completely eliminated the possibility of any outside visitors to my parents’ retirement community or to the hospital where my father is being treated. So we will not be able spend any time with my parents, though there is some comfort in being close to the hospital during this period. We have been able to work remotely while also running some errands for my parents, and I have set up their iPad for easy video communication by Skype. This will hopefully let them interact more intimately with their children and grandchildren at a time when we all desperately want to remain in touch and gauge the progress of their health and care.

It doesn’t seem like we’ll end up accomplishing nearly as much as we hoped with this 1650-mile round trip, but it also seems like a miracle that we could do anything at all. Thanks, Rocky, for making spontaneous travel possible during an impossible time, and also for giving us a glimpse into what the next few months could look like. We are now going to start planning a summer road trip using the same principles of isolated travel by motorhome to destinations that will let us spend active time outdoors where the population density is very low. This will take some careful attention to reserving our campsites, since many public campgrounds have been closed. However, there are still many privately owned RV parks that are open and provide well-spaced sites for social distancing without nature distancing. Working remotely from home takes on a new meaning when the home can be truly remote.