We would have stayed home this summer, pandemic or not. It’s what we do in the summers, and we have reasons.

And the biggest one is that, after nearly 40 years of living in western Washington, we can’t imagine leaving town just when things are getting good. Having grown up in the Sun Belt, in Texas and Arizona, my wife and I grasped this immediately upon reaching our first July.

“This explains November,” we thought, and it does. I start dreaming of travel once the clouds come back, but in the meantime I’m usually content to hang around here.

But last summer was a big one for trave...