WASHINGTON —

Seeking a valid U.S. passport for that 2023 trip? Buckle up, wishful traveler, for a very different journey before you step anywhere near an airport.

A much-feared backup of U.S passport applications has smashed into a wall of government bureaucracy as worldwide travel rebounds toward record pre-pandemic levels — with too few humans to handle the load. The result, say aspiring travelers in the U.S. and around the world, is a maddening pre-travel purgatory defined, at best, by costly uncertainty.

With family dreams and big money on the line, passport seekers describe the slow-motion agony of waiting, worrying, holding the line, refreshing the screen, complaining to Congress, paying extra fees and following incorrect directions. Some applicants are buying additional plane tickets to snag in-process passports where they sit — in other cities — in time to make the flights they booked in the first place.

So grim is the outlook that U.S. officials aren't even denying the problem or predicting when it will ease. They're blaming the epic wait times on lingering pandemic-related staffing shortages and a pause in online processing this year. That's left the passport agency flooded with a record-busting 500,000 applications a week. The deluge is on track to top last year's 22 million passports issued, the State Department says.

It was early March when Dallas-area florist Ginger Collier applied for four passports ahead of a family vacation at the end of June. The clerk, she said, estimated wait times at eight to 11 weeks. They'd have their passports a month before they needed them. "Plenty of time," Collier recalled thinking.

Then the State Department upped the wait time for a regular passport to as much as 13 weeks. "We'll still be okay," she thought.

At two weeks to travel, this was Collier's assessment: "I can't sleep." Failure to obtain the family's passports would mean losing $4,000, she said, as well as the chance to meet one of her sons in Italy after a study-abroad semester. "My nerves are shot, because I may not be able to get to him," she said. She calls the toll-free number every day, holds for as much as 90 minutes to be told — at best — that she might be able to get a required appointment at passport offices in other states.

"I can't afford four more plane tickets anywhere in the United States to get a passport when I applied in plenty of time," she said.

By March, concerned travelers began asking for answers and then demanding help, including from their representatives in the House and Senate, who widely reported at hearings this year that they were receiving more complaints from constituents on passport delays than any other issue.

The U.S. secretary of state had an answer, of a sort.

"With COVID, the bottom basically dropped out of the system," Antony Blinken told a House subcommittee on March 23. When demand for travel all but disappeared during the pandemic, he said, the government let contractors go and reassigned staff that had been dedicated to handling passports.

Around the same time, the government also halted an online renewal system "to make sure that we can fine-tune it and improve it," Blinken said. He said the department is hiring agents as quickly as possible, opening more appointments and trying to address the crisis in other ways.

Passport applicants lit up social media groups, toll-free numbers and lawmakers' phone lines with questions, appeals for advice and cries for help.

At U.S. consulates overseas, the quest for U.S. visas and passports isn't much brighter.

On a day in June, people in New Delhi could expect to wait 451 days for a visa interview, according to the website. Those in Sao Paulo could plan on waiting more than 600 days. Aspiring travelers in Mexico City were waiting about 750 days; in Bogota, Colombia, it was 801 days.

In Israel, the need is especially acute. More than 200,000 people with citizenship in both countries live in Israel. On July 2, the wait was down to 90 days, according to the web site.

Batsheva Gutterman started looking for appointments immediately after she had a baby in December, with an eye toward attending her sister's wedding in July, in Raleigh, N.C. Her quest for three passports stretched from January to June, days before travel. And it only resolved after Gutterman paid a small fee to join a WhatsApp group that alerted her to new appointments, which stay available for only a few seconds.

She ultimately got three appointments on three consecutive days — bureaucracy embodied.

"This makes me incredibly uneasy having a baby in Israel as an American citizen, knowing there is no way I can fly with that baby until we get lucky with an appointment," she said.

There appeared to be some progress. The wait for an appointment for renewal on June 8 stood at 360 days. By July 2, the wait was 90 days, according to the website.

Back in the U.S., Marni Larsen of Holladay, Utah, stood in line in Los Angeles, California, on June 14, in hopes of snagging her son's passport. That way, she hoped, the pair could meet the rest of their family, who had already left as scheduled for Europe, for a long-planned vacation.

She'd applied for her son's passport two months earlier and spent weeks checking for updates online or through a frustrating call system. As the mid-June vacation loomed, Larsen reached out to Sen. Mitt Romney's office, where one of four people he says is assigned full-time to passport issues was able to track down the document in New Orleans.

It was supposed to be shipped to Los Angeles, where she got an appointment to retrieve it. That meant Larsen had to buy new tickets for herself and her son to Los Angeles and reroute their trip from there to Rome. All on a bet that her son's passport was indeed shipped as promised.

"We are just waiting in this massive line of tons of people," Larsen said. "It's just been a nightmare."

They succeeded. And Ginger Collier? She found her happy ending. "I just got my passports!" she texted.

A seven-hour visit to the passport office in Dallas, plus a return the next day, produced the passports with four days to spare.

"What a ridiculous process," Collier said. Nevertheless, the reunion with her son in Italy was sweet. She texted last week: "It was the best hug ever!"

DENVER, Co. — Sean Holland has driven the same route for work every day for more than 20 years. He says it hasn't gotten boring yet.

"It's not your 9 to 5 job," Holland said. "If that's what you're looking for, this isn't it."

Holland is a UPS driver in suburban Denver. He took the job in the early '90s, and since 1995, he's been driving the same truck: Bertha.

"I've had her, next month, it will be 26 years," Holland said. "The old girl, she comes out full to the gills every day. I get rid of all that, and then we do another pickup run in the afternoon and fill it back up. There's a sense of accomplishment that goes along with that."

Holland and delivery drivers across the country were deemed essential workers at the height of the pandemic. Stay-at-home orders forced people to use delivery services at a higher rate. U.S. parcel volume went up 37% from 2019 to 2020.

UPS is hiring 100,000 seasonal workers this year to keep up with the demand as the holidays approach. But they are competing with other major companies in nearly every industry.

"We have a very robust recruiting approach," said Jeff Bloedorn, director of human resources at UPS. "We are heavily into the social media and making people aware of what UPS offers."

The company is starting some new hires at $23 an hour, with a $2,000 signing bonus. Bloedorn says there are other incentives, many of which can't be measured with dollars and cents.

"It’s a great teamwork atmosphere," Bloedorn said. "[People] like the hustle and bustle of moving all the packages... It’s a career that allows a person to take care of themselves and their family."

The pandemic has shifted a younger generation's opinion of work. A UPS survey found 9 in 10 millennials are "more open" to the types of jobs they'd accept.

But experts warn the life of a truck driver is still a difficult sell.

"I always ask my students this," said Dr. Robert Novack, a professor at Penn State University. "'How many of you would like to grow up and be a truck driver?' None of 'em."

Dr. Novack says the under-35 crowd is looking for fulfillment and purpose from a potential career. That can be tough to find from the driver's seat of a delivery truck.

"You see the rigs on the road, and as a car driver, they're an annoyance because they're big, they get in the way," Dr. Novack said. "We're working with some companies on trying to make the job of being a driver a little bit more suited to their needs. You know, treating them almost like an asset."

Holland agrees that the job can be tough.

"It's long hours, but like I said, it's rewarding," he said.

"I actually met my wife on my route out here," Holland said. "She was one of my customers for a couple years before we started dating, and ultimately got married, and now we’re married 21 years. You know, I've had dead-end jobs. And, yeah, I've been doing the same thing for almost 29 years now."

Holland smiled.

"But I love it."

Southwest Airlines canceled hundreds of flights over the weekend, blaming the woes on air traffic control issues and weather. The airline canceled more than 1,000 flights, or 28% of its schedule as of 2 p.m. ET Sunday, according to flight tracker FlightAware. The cancellations mark the highest rate by far of the major U.S. airlines. Next in line are Allegiant and Spirit, both of which had canceled 5% and 4% of its flights respectively, according to the flight tracker. American Airlines canceled 2% of its flights.Asked why Southwest had more disruptions than other airlines, the company said that on Friday evening, it saw a significant impact in the Florida airports after "an FAA-imposed air traffic management program was implemented due to weather and resulted in a large number of cancellations."Officials said they hope to return to normal operations as they move into Sunday.Hearst station KCRA contributed to this report.

At long last, the luxury campground and resort Camp Cedar — adjacent to Kings Island — opened to guests Thursday.

The resort announced its opening day in a Facebook post Thursday morning:

The so-called "glampground" — a portmonteau for "glamour camping" — hit multiple snags headed toward its opening, originally scheduled for early June, citing a combination of unfavorable construction weather, and labor and material shortages.

The delays left hundreds of booked guests disappointed, especially those who had booked a spot for the original opening weekend on Father's Day.

Construction delays also meant the campground couldn't open for the July 4th weekend.

Camp Cedar hosts 73 cabins on the 50-acre site. Most of the cabins rent for $250 a night and sleep up to eight people.