Revenge Travel: Finally, I’m on Trend!

As you read this, I am at the tail end of a luxurious trip to Hawaii with Dear Husband. Rest assured, I’ll be blogging about it within an inch of my life upon my return. We are pulling out all the stops; leavin’ it all on the tourist trail, so to speak. (And in case you’re getting any funny ideas about emptying my house in my now publicly-revealed absence, please know that a dog sitter and two dogs are there, and they would most definitely take exception to that plan.)

I have wanted to visit Hawaii ever since the Brady Bunch did so in 1972. That’s kind of interesting, because my main memory from those three episodes is the part where a tarantula is crawling up Peter’s bed while he sleeps. You’d think that would have put me off Hawaii for life, but no. (Incidentally, there are no tarantulas native to Hawaii, so if you see one, it has gotten out of someone’s dry aquarium. Hawaii has its fair share of other types of spiders, though.)

Long after we started planning this trip, which will be full of volcanoes, waterfalls and lush canyons, along with snorkeling, ziplining, mountain tubing and swimming with manta rays at night, I stumbled upon this article entitled, “The Summer of ‘Revenge Travel’”, and I thought, “Yup. That’s what we’re doing.”

For once, I’m on trend. Usually I don’t start doing stuff until everyone else has, and at this point they’re over it and have moved on to something else. I do these once-trendy things years later and then blog about it, and am amazed anyone continues to read. I will be the first to admit that this blog is an acquired taste. Anyway…

According to the article mentioned above, so many of us had to scuttle our travel plans during the pandemic that more people than ever will be traveling this year. I’m still emotionally recovering from the fact that we had everything booked to go to Italy, but the pandemic hit just two months prior to departure, and everything fell apart. Weirdly, Italy was one of the hottest of the hot spots for COVID, so it was a good thing it didn’t hit after we there. First world problems, I know, but I did blog about my profound disappointment here.

We’ve all been cooped up. Now we want to fly. We’ve learned that we should never take travel for granted again. So when we travel now, we tend to be livin’ large.

Our trips, on the average, will be more expensive than usual, longer than usual, and will include more adventurous activities than usual. Even though the cost of plane tickets are steadily rising due to the increased cost of fuel (Thanks, Putin), none of us seem to care. To add a big ol’ cherry to the top of this sundae, travel restrictions seem to be loosening everywhere. It is time to go!

Now that I’ve heard the phrase “revenge travel”, it seems to be popping up everywhere. I wish a better term could be coined for this phenomenon. This one seems so negative. We’re not trying to get back at anyone, even though we’re kind of thumbing our noses at COVID. These trips won’t be negative experiences. They will be triumphant ones. After a pandemic that we’ll never forget (and should still be taken seriously, by the way), we all deserve an adventure that we’ll never forget.

So carpe diem, dear readers, and brace yourself for a lot of Hawaii-themed blog posts in the near future! Here’s hoping that tarantulas don’t appear in any of them. (I’m not home yet, though, so I can’t make any promises.)

The ultimate form of recycling: Buy my book, read it, and then donate it to your local public library or your neighborhood little free library! http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5