Well. That was quick. After years of thinking about it, more years of planning, months of preparation, and finally, a gentle launch out there into the world, Parallel’s first trips landed with a coronavirus-sized whimper. We were so excited for this spring’s inaugural trip to Spain, but were forced, along with the rest of the world, to cancel. And while we still have trips on the books for September and October, these are looking increasingly tenuous as the virus continues to cut through countries and hamper the travel and engagement many of us are so thirsty for now.
So – what is a fledgling travel company to do in the face of a global pandemic? Improvise, of course! We are delighted to partner with our sister company, Apogee Adventures, to offer custom family adventure trips starting this month. We’re going to save the cross-Atlantic travel for another day and concentrate on offering engaging, guided, and fully customizable camping and adventure trips for families right here in northern New England. To start, we’ve put together three templates – hiking and sea-kayaking here on the coast of Maine, backpacking in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, and bicycle-touring (and cow-counting) along Lake Champlain in Vermont. Each trip template has a variety of different options and allows families to customize a trip at their own level of accommodation (think camping vs. “glamping” vs. hotels and inns (where feasible)) and physical challenge (think easy-walk-in-the-park vs. thousands-of-feet-of-vertical vs. something-in-between).
If you’re hungry for more than that once-a-week trip to the supermarket, if your kids are showing signs of Zoom zombie-itis, if you’re eager to get out and go camping but can’t remember where in the world your old tent is (and truly have no idea how to set it up…), or maybe your boots are broken in and ready, but you’re leery of camp cooking and cleaning – regardless of your situation, we’ve got you covered. While the details are customizable, each of our family trips will offer:
- real engagement with the outdoors,
- trained guides to help out with the biking, hiking and backpacking,
- tents and cooking equipment,
- all of the meals and clean-up provided by our staff, and, most importantly,
- the opportunity for you to step out of the “new normal” for a few days and re-center with your family.
We certainly didn’t expect to be in this situation this time last year, and while we look forward to sipping limoncello in the piazza again sometime soon, we’re very excited to be making this lemonade right now (see what we did there? Limoncello…lemonade. Ha!). We hope that you and your family will join us!
Regarding availability, the phrase “space is limited” has been robbed of virtually all meaning by hawkers through the ages, but truly, space is limited. In order to provide a high level of service, we’ll be able to offer only one or two of the family trips per week through the summer and fall. Please reach out to me directly (chad@parallel-adventures.com) or through our website at parallel-adventures.com/contact and we’ll get the ball rolling!
PS: We will be, of course, taking a number of precautions with regard to the coronavirus and its spread. In general, we’ll be following the very sound guidance of the Maine Center for Disease Control. Our staff will be tested for Covid-19 before any trips and we’ll be implementing reasonable disinfecting and physical-distancing measures. We would be very happy to tell you more any time.
