we just passed four glorious nights in an airbnb right on lake almanor close to lassen national park which demands a whole set of posts. i have so much to say about this trip that it will be a multi-part series answering various questions about the area. click here to see the other posts. today’s question is
when you visit an area that has low covid numbers but high maga numbers, what are the public spaces like?
on our recent trip to lake almanor near lassen national park provided us an opportunity to transverse cultural lines in the covid experience. we went from downtown sacramento in sacramento county, population over 1.5 million with 7,325 confirmed covid cases, to a lake in plumas county, population 18,804 with 17 confirmed cases. not coincidentally, this also meant traveling from a city sometimes dubbed “the most diverse in the country” which is of course predominantly democratic party registration to a predominantly white republican county in “the state of jefferson.” (a collection of rural conservative counties in southern oregon and northern california that seek to secede from liberal california)
17 confirmed cases in plumas county sounds really low when you compare it to sacramento county’s 7,325 cases but when you do the math, you find that the plumas county rate is close to 1% of the population whereas sacramento county’s rate is about half that–pretty interesting to note. we loved the lake and the outdoor experience, but it was a bit of an adjustment to the business culture. in our experience, tourists (presumably mostly from sacramento and the san francisco bay area) wore masks on trails and in stores while most of the managers and workers did not. across from our airbnb, were two otherwise great businesses that were kinda scary by our standards.
the first was the store of wally’s peninsula market. i’m sure this place is a wonderful market when there’s not a pandemic, but i did not feel safe in it with the managers not wearing masks (not to mention groups of tourists crowding into the store with their families in tow and not necessarily wearing masks). the manager, who mostly prepares cooked food, told me that she and another worker (maybe they are the co-owners) both had a “medical exemption” from wearing masks. well, that’s nice but unless the doctor told them they couldn’t be covid-19 carriers, i’d like them to stay home if they aren’t able to wear masks. i’m sympathetic with business owners in this time but i think they have an obligation to find a mask that works for them. i’ll avoid this market and the plague until after the pandemic.
likewise with the red onion grill nextdoor to the market with delicious food and great service–maybe wait until after the pandemic recedes. my husband and i had what would have been a wonderful summer meal had it not been a global pandemic. although they do have outdoor reserved seating, you have to go through the indoor restaurant to get to it. okay maybe nothing they can do about that short of remodeling but didn’t see a single staff member inside wearing a mask or keeping distance.
we were seated at a great table at a distance from other customers but the waiter didn’t wear a mask or keep her distance and also came back and forth a lot. i understand that this is a low population county in trump territory so they may be fantasizing that there is no pandemic, maybe they could ask their customers if they wanted their servers to wear masks? even when i asked the waiter to stand back, she still came pretty close. what else is possible? great place in normal times thoughnot so good that i’d risk death to return…
