At the beginning of 2020, my husband and I sat down with a calendar and a glass of wine one evening after our girls went to bed and mapped out all the places we wanted to go this year. Like many parents with children under two, we wanted to pack in as many flying trips as we could while our youngest daughter could still fly free. We planned to go to England to visit my grandparents, to picnic on beaches, and drink hot cups of tea in museum cafes. We dreamed about skiing out West with my parents, our legs sore from navigating deep powder you can’t find at an Eastern resort.
The place we most looked forward to going was Idaho. Specifically Coeur D’Alene, which has been the topic of our family’s conversation for almost a year. My dad, an Englishman with an unquenchable love for skiing and the Rockies, planned for all his children and grandchildren, 14 in total, to spend a week with him enjoying Idaho’s mountains and lakes in the summertime. My mom found a house through VRBO that overlooked the lake, where we could spend our days on kayaks and paddleboards, teaching the younger children to sit in a canoe or jump off a dock. We planned to visit breweries and farmers’ markets, to go hiking and mountain biking, to eat outside without the humidity.
