Happy Trailerversary to us, year TWO!

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Happy Trailerversary to us, year TWO!

It’s our trailerversary! Two years of travel in the bag. We are celebrating with some locally sourced salsa and a siesta in Mesa, AZ. Milestones are cause for celebration because they are not easy to achieve, and this year has certainly had just as many challenges as triumphs.

Most recently, we had the rather unpleasant experience of road trouble; the trailer achieved its first flat tire. I have extensive experience with bicycle flats, which can be fixed in less than 5 minutes, and some experience with flats on cars, which can be fixed in the range of 30 minutes to 8 hours (depending on how willing you are to wait for AAA in order to avoid a car jack). This flat tire was nothing like that. Read on to hear about our new aeration system (a 6 foot gash in our floor)! 

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This land is your land

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This land is your land

Hi! We’re back in California.  Oh, we didn’t really want to be back in California, but it turns out that’s just where the travel nurse jobs congregate. This means that after 10 short weeks, we had to turn our obnoxiously red truck around and drive back across the country. Here’s our recommended course of action:

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Low Down Adventure

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Low Down Adventure

California boasts many National Parks to check off and Southern California puts many of the ones on our list within reach. Paul was especially excited to go to Death Valley because it is the lowest point in the western hemisphere. I was excited because Death Valley is the third largest Dark Sky Park in the world and I love stargazing. Read on to hear about our unlikely, low down adventure

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Snow Birds, Rain Birds, Love Birds

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Snow Birds, Rain Birds, Love Birds

This post is mostly to say that there’s no longer a water shortage in California, and you’re welcome. We’re pretty sure the serious dry spell ended just about the same time we arrived. We have parked ourselves safely south west of the Oroville dam, and proven that brisk weather is not the only reason that people get head colds in the winter. Rain and dark days must have a little something to do with it too. Read on for snowy adventures in Yosemite!

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Florence, a Retrospective

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Florence, a Retrospective

For those of you taking notes, we actually left Oregon a few months ago. Since then we’ve done a lot of traveling, family seeing, and campground hopping, so we haven’t had a chance to wrap up our beaver state time. Although we did not always love the coastal weather, we did truly enjoy our time in Oregon.

Oregon is full of hidden gems and local wonders. It is a state best experienced on foot, which is to say up close and slowly. We found so much beauty in the microcosm of Florence, a blink town that most tourists drive through without stopping to fill up the gas. We could have expanded this list to include the Oregon scenic byway, which is a gem; Portland, so weird; and Bend, perhaps the worlds most perfect outdoor mini-metro. But—we only spent a day at most in any of these Oregon hot spots. If our time in Florence is any indication, a day is not enough time to know the very best of what those versions of Oregon have to offer. Your time is best spent in Oregon going deep, rather than seeing widely. Read on for our central Oregon coast to do list!

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IT’S OUR TRAILERVERSARY!

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IT’S OUR TRAILERVERSARY!

We’ve now been living in the house on wheels for a full year! At the moment, we’re parked in the Sacramento Delta, about an hour and a half outside of San Francisco and clear across the country from where we started. It has been a stormy January in NorCal and listening to the rain plink plink on the trailer roof reminds me of our very first night in West Virginia. Read on for some reminiscing, recapping, and to hear about the parts of trailer-life that I thought I would hate, but don't.

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The Road Trip to Glory: live coverage of our PNW drive

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The Road Trip to Glory: live coverage of our PNW drive

In honor of Paul’s obsession with the Olympics I give you a breakdown of the points and deductions awarded on our most recent road trip.

Road trip enthusiasts will recall that the NY to AZ journey featured several 14 hour days in a bucket seat. The tuck is comfortable, but no truck is that comfortable. Since then, we've made it a priority to take jobs that are an easier distance—this one was 12 hours as the Google map drives. We had a week to get there and the result was a blast. We researched our route a little, but let whim dictate where we went and what we did. +5 points for flexibility

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Long Winded Excuse for Not Blogging in a Month

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Long Winded Excuse for Not Blogging in a Month

However busy the ER has been during Paul’s time on, his time off has made our Idaho life feel like a series of long weekends. I love a long weekend, who doesn’t? While Southern Idaho is not about to make the Lonely Planet’s list of must-see destinations, our long-weekend lifestyle has allowed us to explore a lot of wonderful just-beyond-local destinations.

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The Love of a Grocery Store

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The great thing about trailer-life food shopping is that it is exactly like stationary food shopping. 

Even when we’re traveling between gigs, we make coffee in our coffee maker and we drink that coffee from our favorite mugs as we prep our normal breakfast in our every-day kitchen. We never have to resort to awful road trip, rest stop food. We buy perishables and keep them in our fridge where they stay cold while we drive. It is far more delicious and economical than trailer-less road trip food.

But--the terrible thing about trailer life and food shopping is that travelers can never fall in love with a grocery store.

Have you been in love with a grocery store? I have...

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Between Job Adventures: Arizona to Idaho

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Between Job Adventures: Arizona to Idaho

Some of the very best parts of travel nursing are the times in between gigs. It's a forced vacation every 3 months.  During anchored life vacations you are either a) driving through familiar roads to local destinations or b) paying the big dollars to fly someplace exciting. In contrast, travel nurse vacations start from a relatively new location (Southern Arizona)  and bring you to an even newer location (Southern Idaho, what are you about?!?).  

There was SO much to see and do in Arizona and Utah, we had to pick and choose. Here's a quick photo-romp through our adventures.

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