Where are we??

I'm typing this blog post thinking "It's about time." I'm smiling thinking of some people I know who are also thinking it's about time. So here I am!

Let me start with the question we are most frequently asked. Are we going to travel again for Caleb to be a travel nurse? We would love to travel again! We bought an RV camper last year so when we traveled we could always have our home and own things with us. We don’t know for sure when we will travel again or even where we will be a year from now. Our original plan was to start travel nursing again this fall and winter with hopes Caleb could come back to work seasonally in Estes Park May-September. As with many others, Covid-19 affected our decisions this year. We decided to stay in Estes Park because it sounded like travel nurse ER contracts were very fluid and some were being cancelled.

As I bet most of us have learned from this covid-19 pandemic, none of us can know or picture exactly where we will be five years from now let alone a few months or a year down the road. Life does not perfectly follow our mental plans accordingly. Sometimes it is way off from what we ever imagined or hoped. Let me share where we are now since that's probably why you are here reading. 

We have been in Estes Park for over 2 years and love this small mountain town and its community. In August of this year we made a big change. We closed on a house in Pueblo, CO (whole other blog post to talk about how we came to this decision). We love our little house which is just under 900 sq. feet. It is also a 3 hour drive from Estes Park where Caleb works in the Emergency Department. 

I know. I know. I can picture the confused look on your face right now. You bought a house 3 hours from where you work?!? We still have our RV camper which we lived in full time for the past year. Now we are living in it part time each week. We moved our RV camper to another friend's property about 25 minutes outside of Estes Park. Each week we are camping in our RV for about 2.5-3 days for Caleb to work at the hospital. Since he works 12 hour shifts he can work his 3 days in a row each week.

It is definitely camping, or as someone has coined the term "Glamping - glamorous camping." And that is pretty accurate to our days in the RV. It is camping, but we sleep in our own beds, we have a cozy wood burning stove and gas heat, we have a gas oven and stove to cook in. We are surrounded by woods and national forest land where it is so peacefully quiet with mountain views. 

The not so glamorous part is we are semi-boondocking. We are hooked up to electricity on our friends' property, but try to use as little as possible and rely on our gas resources instead. We are not hooked up to any water as temps are often below freezing in the winter. If we stayed hooked up to our friend's house water like we did at the previous house we were parked next to, we would have to winterize our pipes every week we left since we don't have the heat on while gone and pipes would freeze. This would be a nuisance to winterize and de-winterize every few days. So instead, we bring up a 7 gallon tank of water which is great for a 3 day period for hand washing, washing dishes, drinking water. When we need heated water, we have a large tea kettle we heat it up with on the gas stove. Since we do not have the water hooked up to shower, we have other creative ways to shower. Usually Hayden and I make reservations to swim at our rec center in the kid pool area and then we shower afterwards in the locker room. Or I will go and work out at the rec center and shower after. We are typically in the RV only 2.5 days at a time so we only go 1 day without a shower. Caleb can shower at the hospital as needed since he's in contact with covid patients off and on anyway. We also have some very gracious friends who have said their homes are always open to us if other options don't work for a shower.

Our life may, and most likely, looks very different from yours but it's what we've chosen. We embrace the journey and adventure of it. Our current set up may seem "crazy" "intense" "adventurous" as friends have called it, but I look at it all with a big world perspective as I'll call it. There are so many families across the world who live with so little. They live sleeping on dirt floors, no heat except a fire they must keep going at night to stay warm, no running water walking miles to get their water, uncertainty of when and where their next food will come from, war happening in their backyards. My family is blessed. We have two comfortable homes. One of them is in a town I consider one of the most picturesque places in the country with Rocky Mountain National Park literally in our backyard. We can hike 20 minutes from the camper and be on national park land. I am grateful and excited about what we have in this life and know God is the provider of all things. 

We live in gratefulness to the places God has taken us and brought us. It’s an adventurous way of living we have chosen and trust God who is the orchestrator of it all. Caleb and I would love to hear from you so if you have any questions about our RV living shoot us a comment here on the blog. I can answer them in the next blog post which will be much sooner rather than later. 

Love,

Heather, Caleb, and Little H

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