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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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 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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Part 3 of Step 9: Renovating our New-Used Trailer

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Part 3 of Step 9: Renovating our New-Used Trailer

When I first started organizing this series of post, I tried to write what we did day by day, but the days and the tasks all blended together. We didn’t really paint first and then worry about the desk second. We made these changes all at once over the course of 10 days. Waiting for paint to dry meant you better be sanding down the headboard, or hemming curtains, or figuring out what dishes you want to haul with you. I’ve organized this series in “steps” because it’s easier to digest this way, not because we actually did these steps in this nice, leisurely order.

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Step 8: Choosing an RV or Camper

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Step 8: Choosing an RV or Camper

This post is step 7 in the steps you need to take in order to become a travel nurse. It’s time to choose a trailer!

We should probably mention that there were other options for housing; agencies will offer company housing or help you find a place nearby. We weren't that excited about living out of a suitcase or staying in hotels for months at a time--and while some of the company housing is probably very nice, the travel trailer gave us the freedom to take our home with us wherever we went. Plus, without the company housing, most contracts will throw in a living stipend which will cover the cost of the campground easily.

Different Camper Species

When we first started looking at trailers, we knew nothing. We had always been tent people. We did not know the difference between a Class ‘A’ RV and a camper. Now, we are experts and for the ignorant and foundationly anchored, here’s the quick breakdown

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We quit our jobs and moved into a trailer

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We quit our jobs and moved into a trailer

At the end of December, Paul and I quit our stable jobs in Chicago to hit the open road. We'd been dreaming of travel nursing for years, and finally decided the time was right to take the adventurous leap. Neither of us had ever spent even a single night in an RV/Camper/Travel Trailer before.

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