Going to California

If it wasn't for the cold weather pushing us south and our flight out of L.A. looming in the near future, I don't think we would have left that place so soon. This past week of life has been a good one. We spent our time working near Grants Pass at an organization called Wildlife Images. It is a wildlife rehabilitation and education center. They take in injured wildlife to rehabilitate and release them—they house the animals that wouldn't have a fighting chance in the wild and give them the best possible life in captivity. Some of their permanent residents include Clark the cougar, Kodi the Grizzly, Nikoli the Lynx, Tundra the wolf, and Nubs the badger… among so many other critters. We spent a week there and enjoyed getting to know the place and the people pretty well.

Our time was spent helping out with a wide variety of projects on the huge compound. There are six black bears living there and they are all getting a little sluggish and lazy—we did some work getting their winter enclosure ready for when they decide to go to sleep for a few months. Nubs, the badger, loves to dig—he had done so much digging that there wasn't any good dirt left to poke around in. So, we brought some more in and revamped his home. He was pretty stoked about it. There are lots of birds living at Wildlife Images—lots of big, hungry, predatory birds. They like there meat in various forms, so I got involved in cutting up rats, mice, venison, quail, and fish to create meat balls for their dinner. They decided to have a garage sale while we were around to raise some extra money. We found ourselves doing the treasure hunting for the sale. There was a full-size semi trailer full of stuff. It felt like we were trying out for American Pickers—searching through all that junk and pulling out the stuff that might sell. Blackberries have taken over a good portion of the back half of the property. We were sent out to clear a new cart path and clean around some animal enclosures. I enjoyed wielding a machete and hacking through the tangle of thorns and berries. Overall, it was a week filled with variety—we found ourselves doing something different everyday and had a lot of fun with it.

Wildlife Images was an awesome place to be because of all the crazy critters, but mostly because of the great crew we worked alongside. They put up with all the shenanigans and let us get involved in almost every aspect of the operation—even when that meant slowing the pace a bit. Thanks, everybody, you all made it a very memorable week!

I'm in Crescent City, California right now… sitting in a Starbucks as I write this blog—utilizing their speedy wifi. It is pretty strange to think of Oregon in the past tense. California had always seemed like a faraway dream and now, here we are—wow, that happened really fast. The road has been my home for 10 months now—13,000 miles of it. When we left we had no idea if our plan would work or how long we could keep up this lifestyle. This thing started as a dream of ours and it has been amazing to find that other people believe in our dream too. Since January we have been relying on the goodness of people along the way—we have been blessed. Thanks, everyone, for turning our dream into a reality. Life is good and redwood trees are unreal.