Wandering Back to the West Coast

A recap of our 6-week holiday hiatus and the start of our third travel therapy contract

One of the huge advantages to travel therapy is the flexibility. After we ended my contract in Santa Barbara on December 9th, we loaded up our vehicle and started our trip back to Kansas to be with family and spend the holiday season at home. Our plan was to stay in Kansas for 6 weeks before we would start our next contract. This sounds like a lot of time off, but we had big things planned (or so we thought). December was busy and went by way too fast - we celebrated Tyler's 30th birthday (I successfully surprised him with the cutest cake), enjoyed a short trip to Colorado with Tyler's family, had Christmas traditions with both of our families and celebrated Tabi's wedding on New Years Eve. Trips with friends, dinner dates and working as needed at my former job were all scheduled for January.

I knew something was very wrong as I was eating my Dairy Queen ice cream cake and could not taste that delicious crunchy chocolate layer between the vanilla soft serve. I tested positive for COVID. I was pretty sick for about 10 days and most of our January plans had to be cancelled or changed. It seemed unfair to be back at home; ready to spend quality time with family and friends, but be stuck in bed instead. As waves of pity would come so would waves of gratitude. Gratitude for my amazing husband who took the best care of me (he is my angel!) and to my in-laws who allowed me to be sick in comfort and let us take over their entire third floor. I also felt a new sense of empathy for my patients because now, to a small degree, I could relate to those feelings of extreme lethargy, depression and weakness. While being ill is ultimately a theft of time, there was actually no better time for me to get COVID since we had already planned for me to be off work.

Once I was better, we were able to squeeze in some time with friends (and meet their baby!) and family before we would be leaving for contact number 3. Our 6 weeks at home did not quite go as planned, but we are thankful for them nonetheless. We appreciate our families so much for without question letting us share their spaces, eat their food and make us feel at home.

On January 25th we hit the road for *enter drumroll here* Carpinteria again! I signed a new contract with the same facility I had been working with in Santa Barbara. We were able to start a new lease at our previous Airbnb location. We were heading back to the beach!

It took us 3 nights to drive out west. Along the way, we stayed in Golden, CO, outside of Zion National Park in Spingdale, UT and Victorville, CA. During our long drives we try to find dog-friendly sights and cool areas to explore to help break up the time in the car. This trip we stopped at the Colorado National Monument (to see the snow covered red rocks), drove through Zion National Park and visited the Hoover Dam. Our favorite stop was Zion. We cannot wait to take a trip back there to hike and explore more! It is wildly beautiful and just so unreal.

We pulled into our little beach town of Carpinteria and it was as if we had never left. It was nice to be back to the familiar and even nicer to be back in the land of sunshine and palm trees. The weather has been chilly but we will take a California winter over a midwest winter any day. One difference since we had left is the integrity of the beaches - California had some really terrible rainstorms that brought tons of debris to the beach. The city is working on restoring them. We have settled into our old routines of long beach walks and eating at our favorite spots around town - we even added a new hobby of afternoon pickle ball! We have had fun learning the game from locals and even met another traveling couple since playing. Work has been great - it was comforting going back to my previous job and definitely lessened those first day of work jitters. This week will be the start of our fourth week here and if all goes as planned, we should be here until the end of April. We have some fun adventures planned this contract and cannot wait to share them with you all :)

As always, thank you for reading and for supporting us! God has been so good to us and there is not a moment that goes by that we don't feel immensely blessed to have each other and to be living our life together. This season has been filled with joy and continued growth. We are trying to soak in each moment and experience - I'll never forget what my grandpa wrote in a card to me years ago..."Jesus said, life is but a breath."

Love,

The Wandering Wrights